China Lake (25 page)

‘‘Live and learn.’’ He smoothed his mustache. ‘‘So, if it wasn’t your brother, who killed Pastor Pete?’’

‘‘I have no idea. How about you?’’

"How many people hated his guts? I couldn’t begin to count."

The CCTV camera bolted above the entrance to Strider, Baines & Moore, stockbrokers, captured the footage. It shows Jesse coming through the door at 12:32 p.m. on October twenty-first. The tape quality isn’t great. Even with him walking slowly on crutches, the black-and-white video gives him a smudged, grainy look. He talks to his broker for about half an hour, and the camera records him leaving just before one o’clock. Less than a minute later, it catches a young woman walking up the street in the direction he had gone. She’s in frame for only a few seconds, just enough to make out her round face and the big bow in her ponytail.

Jesse next stopped into his bank, which had better-quality cameras. On the tape the ceiling lights reflect from his wraparound sunglasses. A bank manager, a woman in a snug brown suit, greets him and ushers him to her desk. He talks to her for a good while, discussing a refinance on his mortgage, rates having dropped. She’s attentive.

So is the round-faced girl with the ponytail, standing at a central counter filling in a deposit slip, and filling it in, endlessly. Two other young women soon join her, blondes with glazed lipstick and identical back-combed hair. They too begin filling in deposit slips intricately, watching him.

From their whispers and covert curiosity, they’re apparently figuring out that Jesse had money, more than he’d earn on a junior associate’s salary. What they didn’t know was that he had clawed a settlement out of the driver who injured him. It had been a tough fight, because the driver was a software millionaire who didn’t want the world to know he’d rammed his BMW into two people while enjoying a front-seat blow job. But Jesse had forced him to pay restitution, enough to fight off poverty for life.

The bank manager shook his hand before he stood to go. The girls at the counter waited until the door closed behind him, and then followed him out.

The day of Peter Wyoming’s funeral started when my cell phone rang at three forty-five a.m. Stumbling out of Jesse’s bedroom in the dark, I smashed into a coffee table and fell onto the sofa, cursing. My father was on the line, Philip James Delaney, Captain, USN, Retired, calling from Singapore.

‘‘Evan, the cruise line says you phoned with an emergency. What’s wrong?’’

Hearing his deep voice, that tough, crisp tone, comforted me. I hated telling him the rotten news, destroying his time with my mother. My parents got along smashingly—for two weeks a year, in international waters.

He listened. ‘‘Did you just say Brian is in
jail
?’’

I told him I needed them to come get Luke, and he jolted me wide-awake.

‘‘We can’t. Your mom’s in the hospital. Dengue fever.’’

He went on, saying, ‘‘Don’t worry, Sis, you know what a tough little bird she is.’’ Trying to reassure me, calling me by a pet name from my childhood. ‘‘But I can’t leave her alone ten thousand miles from home.’’ I felt my plan blowing to pieces. Luke wasn’t going anywhere. ‘‘I’ll get there,’’ he said, ‘‘but it’ll be at least a week.’’
Buck up,
he said.
Keep the pressure on the police, without remorse. Damn that Tabitha.

The sunrise was clearer that morning, still redshifted but not so pungent with smoke. The heat and wind had broken, letting the forest service contain the fire. After breakfast Luke and I took my car to the shop to get the obscenities painted over, picked up a rental car, and went to Jesse’s office so I could speak to a family law attorney. His name was Solis, a man built like a crate and as bald as an egg. While Jesse watched Luke, I talked to him about getting a restraining order against Tabitha. He asked if I had thought about long-term custody issues.

‘‘You mean, if Tabitha gets visitation rights?’’

‘‘Yes,’’ he said, drawing out the word. ‘‘And if your brother isn’t in a position to have Luke live with him.’’

I felt my face flushing. ‘‘You mean, if his case goes to trial—’’

‘‘And beyond. If he’s convicted, things will become much more complicated for you.’’

I said, ‘‘They have the wrong man. Brian’s going to be exonerated.’’

‘‘That would be our best-case scenario, of course. However, I do know something of your brother’s case, and—’’

‘‘You’ve been talking to Jesse.’’

‘‘Yes, he briefed me on the situation.’’

He talked on after that, but my mind was wandering into weedy fields of anger. Jesse had told him Brian was guilty.

When I got back to his office, Jesse said, ‘‘You have lunch plans? I thought we could take Luke—’’

‘‘Yes. I do. Maybe you could take him.’’

‘‘Sure.’’ He looked puzzled. ‘‘Did everything go all right with Solis?’’

‘‘Yes.’’

He tilted his head, hoping I would explain my mood. I said, ‘‘I’m going to Peter Wyoming’s funeral.’’

Surprise on his face. ‘‘Is that why you’re all wound up?’’

‘‘I’m fine.’’ I was ready to staple his face to the desk.

‘‘Evan?’’

If I had been Luke’s age, solving this problem would have been straightforward. I would have jammed him in the face with a crayon. But I was past that now, into the era of the slow burn, the issues that clung to you unwanted, like toilet paper stuck to your shoe as you traipsed out of a public lavatory.

‘‘It’s nothing. I’ll see you later.’’

The Remnant’s furniture-showroom church was full when I arrived. Through the plate-glass windows I could see the choir on the stage, and the baton twirlers, wearing black sequined leotards and dark little veils over their faces. The big window that I had crashed through with Dr. Neil Jorgensen was boarded up. A poster adorned it, a drawing of Pastor Pete. Clearly it was Tabitha’s, and it was one of her finest. He looked noble and besieged.
Wyoming Agonistes
. Beneath the poster someone had hand-painted a Bible quote.
Slain for the word of God and for the witness he had born
. The handwriting was neat, no drips, didn’t match the obscenities on my Explorer. Shiloh had probably painted this. A cutesy little circle dotted the i in
slain
.

Hoping to avoid a fresh smiting, I was hiding in a long black dress, sunglasses, and a hat. Men were standing outside the door watching all who came in, so I hung back until the music struck up and they went inside. I followed.

The church was packed. I saw several journalists, including Sally Shimada and a TV crew. Black clothing smattered the crowd, but there was far more flannel, and camouflage gear, than I had ever seen at a funeral. The atmosphere was jagged. I had been to funerals for people who died unexpectedly, even violently, and so anticipated the sense of shock, suppressed hysteria, and unbearable heaviness that reverberated in the Remnant’s chapel. But it was pitched so high here that the air almost jangled. And there was another feeling loose in the room, a feeling not just of outrage but of anticipation. The evidence was lying up front in an open coffin.

That was my first surprise: that the mortuary had been able to salvage enough for the corpse to go on display. The fire had not destroyed Peter Wyoming at all. He looked pale and peaceful in his casket, his bolo tie shining under the fluorescent lighting. You couldn’t see the bullet hole or the burn marks for all the flowers surrounding him—lilies mounded on the casket, and huge arrangements on easels: a crown of thorns, a rod of iron, and the pièce de résistance, a mini handheld vacuum cleaner with the epitaph
Slut Buster
.

The choir’s red robes swayed and randomly shimmied as members broke down in tears. They were singing about heaven cracking open with peals of thunder to destroy the destroyers of the earth. Flanking the stage were Curt Smollek and Isaiah Paxton. Smollek was affecting a Secret Service-agent, eyes-on-the-crowd look, but far too late to protect his pastor. Wyoming had known he was in danger on the night he was killed, and reached out not to his security detail, but to Brian. That was what convinced me that the church lay behind his death.

I still couldn’t make sense of why Wyoming had called Brian. My brother insisted that Wyoming had been lucid that night, but I wondered if he had been acting under some pharmaceutical impulse. Having seen his bizarre behavior at Tabitha’s house and outside the China Lake police station, I suspected that the drugs Chenille wanted Kevin Eichner to steal had been meant not for her, but for her husband.

I spotted Tabitha sitting on the aisle, and my stomach twanged. Her black dress clung to her—for dear life, it seemed. With her pale skin and sorrowful eyes she looked gothic, like a Faulkner belle driven mad by war and hunger. I wondered whether she was grieving Wyoming as her minister or as her lover. Or maybe her raggedness really was hunger, considering that Chenille had put her on half rations. A part of me wanted to grab her, drag her out of here, and stick her under a cold shower.

The hymn finished and the eulogies started, a man from the congregation taking the stage to recall the wonders of Pastor Pete. ‘‘Saved me from the bottle,’’ he said. A second man came up, blowing his nose into a handkerchief. ‘‘Diagnosed my wife’s cancer, Pastor Pete did. Also her cheating.’’ Others followed. ‘‘He showed me the light.’’ ‘‘Showed me how to get stubborn stains out from my carpet.’’ ‘‘He purged me of my craving for tobacco.’’ ‘‘For junk food.’’ ‘‘For Thai strippers.’’ The congregation nodded and sputtered. ‘‘Drove Satan out of my son; he don’t cross-dress no more.’’ ‘‘Taught me good hygiene.’’ ‘‘Made the world make sense.’’ When the last speaker stumbled sobbing from the stage the choir broke into a new number that sounded, so help me, like ‘‘Amazing Rage.’’ The twirlers swung into a fresh routine, two batons apiece, flinging them toward the lights and catching them blind, veils hindering their view. A woman in pink plastic eyeglasses rushed the stage, shrieking, like a fan at a Tom Jones concert. Smollek grabbed her as she threw herself at the coffin. The hymn modulated up a step and the twirlers reached the climax, stopping dead, posing with their batons high and crossed, as though on Calvary.

Then, as the last notes faded away, Chenille stood up. The crowd hushed.

She looked like a new creation. Gone were the pastel flamboyancies. She had stripped down to the unvarnished wood. Her black outfit was severe, almost like a Mao suit. With her braid chopped and her face scrubbed of makeup, she looked androgynous.

She stared out across the crowd. ‘‘Not one a’ you should be surprised. We knew this was coming.’’ She turned to the coffin. ‘‘He knew it.’’ She reached out and rested her hand against Pete’s embalmed cheek. ‘‘Didn’t you, baby?’’

Around me the reporters squirmed, startled and excited by this unusual display.

Tenderly she said to the corpse, ‘‘Revelation eleven. It was you, honey. It all fell on you to take the weight of what it meant.’’

A reporter behind me whispered, ‘‘What’s she talking about?’’

‘‘The Tribulation,’’ a woman murmured. ‘‘Revelation says God will send two witnesses to prophesy. They’ll be killed, but resurrected.’’

It was Sally Shimada. I was impressed.

Chenille said, ‘‘Death ain’t the end, not by a long shot. For the Lord says if anyone harms his witnesses, thus he is doomed to be killed.’’

A woman in the congregation shouted, ‘‘Amen!’’ Another yelled, ‘‘Justice for Pastor Pete!’’ I shrank inwardly, knowing that they were talking about Brian.

Chenille said, ‘‘Justice? Oh, justice is coming. Scripture tells us. ‘For the witnesses lay dead in the street, but then a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them.’ ’’

Sally said, ‘‘She’s quoting the passage out of context. ’’

Chenille spread her arms. ‘‘So what are you all bawling about? Didn’t you just hear me? ‘They stood up’ ’’—she pounded her shoe on the stage—‘on their feet!’ ’’

Turning again to the coffin, she leaned down, putting her face close to Pete’s, and stared into his closed eyes. She said, ‘‘The tomb is not for you. Ain’t no grave gonna hold your body down.’’ She kissed him on the forehead. ‘‘No grave. Nohow.’’ She kissed each of his eyelids. ‘‘We’re ready and waiting, baby.’’

She kissed him on the lips.

The reporters collectively drew in a breath. So did I. I didn’t know whether her marriage really had been discordant, or whether that even mattered now. Whatever the truth of her private life, this was a remarkable performance.

Chenille straightened. ‘‘Pete met his destiny and he met it like a man, going straight ahead. He didn’t sit around, and we can’t sit around neither. The Lord expects us to act. You want your part of the prize? It’s time to get yourselves up on
your
feet.’’

She drew in a breath. ‘‘People, the storm is here.’’

The energy that surged through the room was palpable. Shiloh rose to her feet, raised her arms, and cried, ‘‘Let’s get biblical!’’

Pallbearers approached the stage. Paxton lowered the lid on the coffin, pausing to take a last look. For a second his face lost its focus, looked like hot grease jumping from a skillet. Then he shut the lid carefully, and with the other men hoisted the casket onto his shoulders. They carried it outside and slid it into the bed of his green pickup. Chenille climbed in next to it and Paxton pulled out, driving slowly up the street. The crowd followed en masse.

It got confusing after that.

A block from the Remnant’s chapel was a skate-boarding shop, a place that gave them spiritual eczema, called the Church of Skatan. As the green pickup crawled past, a rock flew from the crowd and bounced off the store’s brickwork. Then came trash from the gutter, and a boot. A baton, which was quickly retrieved. Then eggs, which was when I knew that this was premeditated, and wouldn’t be pretty. They splattered on the window. The storekeeper was shutting the door, asking people to calm down, but had to duck when a brick came tumbling at him. The window went in a great crystal cataract. The green pickup inched on. Men jumped through the window and started throwing merchandise around the store. Skateboards came shooting out the broken window. Inside the storekeeper begged them to stop. Then he came flying through the broken window too. Chenille stood meditatively in the bed of Paxton’s truck, eyes front, like a statue of the Madonna being paraded through European streets.