Covenant (35 page)

64

            Sitting in the SUV in the bowels of the Armory’s underground garage, re-reading Thorne’s file for perhaps the tenth time and wracking his brains for a strategy to apprehend the man, Cutty suddenly received an emergency notification from Genesis.

            There was a possible hit on Thorne.

            After they had lost Thorne and his harlot at the Midtown condominium, Cutty had directed Genesis to place wiretaps on the telephone lines of Thorne’s family and friends.  At a quarter past eleven o’clock that morning, an unidentified cell phone had called the home in Decatur at which Thorne’s sister and nephew resided.  

            The mystery phone could have belonged to anyone.  But he remembered that Thorne had ditched his cell in a restaurant trash bin in Duluth.  Most likely, Thorne had purchased one of those pre-paid gadgets that didn’t require ID or credit authorization—and which would show up as “caller unknown” on a wiretap.

            In a revelatory flash that could have only been divinely inspired, a plan instantly formed in his mind.

            “The Lord and Prophet are my shepherds,” he whispered, reciting a variation on Psalm 23 that he’d learned during Kingdom Bible study.  “They guide me on the path of righteousness for the sake of the Kingdom.”

            He called Valdez.  At the sound of her soft voice, a shiver trickled down his spine, and he thought of the Prophet’s promise. 
A man who finds a wife finds a good thing.

            “I’ll collect you in five minutes,” he said.  “We have a new mission, and the spirit has revealed to me the perfect means to fulfill it.”    

65

            In light, late-morning traffic that metro Atlanta enjoyed only on weekends, Lisa drove to the address in Stone Mountain, a forty-five minute trip from Kennesaw.  Anthony sat in the passenger seat, the Bible open on his lap, and explained to her his theory about Bob’s intended message to them based on the verse in Genesis. 

            “God, I hope you’re wrong,” she said when he finished.  “But it’s such an awful possibility it has to be right.  It explains so much.”

            “Including, maybe, why they killed my dad.”  His gut was as tight as a drum; the prospect of learning the truth at last had virtually given him a stomach ache of anticipation.  “It’s not going to be an easy conversation with Danny.  But it’s long overdue.”  

            He also searched out the other scriptures marked in yellow.  As he located each one, he folded back the top corner of the page, for quick reference afterward, and read the passage aloud to Lisa.

            “After the verse in Genesis, the next one is from second Samuel, chapter four, verse seven,” he said.  “It says,
‘For when they came into the house, he lay on his bed in his bedchamber, and they smote him, and slew him, and beheaded him, and took his head, and gat them away through the plain all night. ‘
“

            “What the heck does that mean?” She glanced away from the road with a frown.

            “Don’t know.  But it’s damn violent.  Like something I would’ve written.”

            “We’ll have to chew on that one for a while.”

            He licked his finger, flipped forward in the book.  “The next one is from Nehemiah, ninth chapter, thirty-fifth verse.  ‘
For they have not served thee in their kingdom, and in thy great goodness that thou gavest them, and in the large and fat land which thou gavest before them, neither turned they from their wicked works.’
“

            “That reads like an accusation directed at New Kingdom,” she said.  “They have great resources, but do wicked works.”

            “Power corrupts,” he said.  “According to what Bob told me, they’ve committed every crime under the sun.”

            “Any more?” she asked. 

            “Let’s see.”  He searched, found another passage.  “Jeremiah, twenty-third chapter, fourteenth verse.
‘I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem an horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none doth return from his wickedness; they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah.’
“

            “Sounds like a reference to Bishop Prince,” she said.

            “The self-proclaimed prophet?  Who walks in lies and encourages evildoers?”

            “And commits adultery,” she said, with a disgusted grimace. 

            Thinking of the interpretation at which they’d arrived about the bishop, Anthony felt a little ill, too. 

            “Next is Micah, chapter two, verse one,” he said.  “
‘Woe to them that devise iniquity, and work evil upon their beds! When the morning is light, they practice it, because it is in the power of their hand.’
“

            “Could be a generalized indictment of evil people,” she said. 

            “Very generalized.  Too generalized for Bob to have included it, unless he wants us to interpret it some other way.”

            “Let’s table that one for further consideration.”  She slowed the car as they approached a traffic light.  “Is this our turn?”

            “Yeah, make a right,” he said, and lowered his head to the book again.  He flipped through pages.  “Okay, found another one.  John, chapter eight, verse thirty-two.  ‘
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.’
“

            “When you find the truth, you’ll be free, baby,” she said.  “You’ll be free of the weight you’ve carried on your shoulders all these years.  You’ll have closure.”

            “I want justice,” he said.  “It’s not enough to simply know the truth.  I have to do something about it.”

            “We will,” she said.  “Is that the last one?  It sounded like a closing statement.”

            “Hang on.”  He riffled through more text.  “Wait.  Galatians, chapter four, verse sixteen.
‘Am I therefore become your enemy, because I tell you the truth?’
“

            “I don’t understand that,” she said.  “Bob is your enemy?”

            “It’s the last verse marked in yellow.”  He closed the Bible, clasped it in his lap.  “I’ve gotta think on it.”

            “That gives us three scriptures we’ll have to review later,” she said.  “The rest are clear, relatively speaking.”

            “The others we think are puzzling might actually be clear, too.  Bob’s plan is too important—he couldn’t risk us drawing the wrong conclusions.  I’m thinking we’ve got to take a step back and view the scriptures in the context of what we’ve learned.  Much easier said than done, though.”

            “He couldn’t have picked a better book for hiding a message, that’s for sure,” she said.  “Show a Bible passage to ten different theologians and ask them what they think it means, and you’ll get ten different interpretations.”

            “That’s why I hated Sunday school,” he said.  “My take on things was usually different than the teacher’s, but they would say I was misinterpreting the text.”

            “It’s not like math,” she said.  “There are no definitive answers.”             

            “I sure could use a definitive answer right now.  We think we know what the bishop has done, but we still don’t know where Bob has hidden all his damning evidence.  Or if he really has any.”

            “He does,” she said.  “We’ll figure it out.”

            He looked up at the road.  “Hey, our street’s coming up.  Make a left.”

66

            They turned onto a twisting road that wound through an older neighborhood of split levels and ranches with big, sloping yards.  Anthony indicated the house nearing on the left. 

            It was a brick ranch that had seen better days.  Peeling white trim.  Rain gutters clogged with leaves.  A sheet of plywood covering one of the front windows like a pirate’s eye patch.    Two old, rusty cars were parked in the muddy driveway, one of them sitting on cinder blocks, and random pieces of junk—old tires, hubcaps, and other assorted auto parts—littered the weed-choked lawn. 

            Danielle’s Ford Explorer was parked at the end of the driveway.  Lisa inched in behind the vehicle. 

            “This boyfriend of hers must be a real winner,” she said.  “This place reminds me of
Sanford and Son.
”

            “Please, no smart-ass comments to her.  She’s going to be pissed that you’re here at all.”      

            “I promise to keep my mouth shut.”           

            He reached over Lisa and tapped the horn three times. 

            “If she’s high like usual, she won’t bother to come to the door,” Lisa said. 

            “She’s expecting me.”

            Lisa looked doubtful.  After about five minutes and several more honks, Danielle still hadn’t come out. 

            “She must be puffing on some good stuff,” Lisa said. 

            “I’ll be back.”  Grabbing the bishop’s book, Anthony got out of the car and approached the house, weaving around the discarded auto parts.

            The door bell was broken.  He rapped on the scarred front door with his fist. 

            “Danielle!  It’s your brother!  Open up!”

            Another minute passed, and the door finally opened.  Danielle stood on the threshold, blinking sleepily and rubbing her puffy eyes.

            Anthony’s physical features were a balanced blend of traits he’d inherited from his mom and dad, but Danielle had taken almost entirely after their father.  She had his mocha complexion, thick eyebrows, penny-brown eyes, high cheekbones.  She was slim like Dad, too, and stood only a couple inches shorter than their father’s five-ten. 

            She wore her normal everyday gear of long, wrinkled t-shirt, and faded loose-fitting jeans.   Her dry hair was tied up in a blue scarf.

            The familiar scents of marijuana and cigarettes wafted from inside.

            “Damn, it ain’t been an hour yet, Junior,” she said in her raspy smoker’s voice.  “I was sleepin’.  Shit.”

            Although she was only twenty-nine, she looked and sounded older.  Her eyes were smudged with dark circles.  Her complexion had a bleached-out quality, like wood left out too long in the sun.

            For a long time, he’d wondered where the sister he remembered from his childhood had gone.  The adorable, bright-eyed girl who’d race on bicycles with him up and down the street, who’d had the guts to ride all the roller coasters with him at amusement parks, who’d liked to capture butterflies.  That happy girl had grown up into this bitter woman who rarely had anything nice to say about anyone, who cared only about satisfying her own pathetic addictions.

            But he thought he finally knew what had happened.        

            “I said I’d be here
within
an hour,” he said.  “Anyway, let’s go.  You’re riding with us.”

            “Where we going?”

            “I’m taking you to get some breakfast.  How’s Waffle House sound?”

            At the mention of breakfast, her eyes brightened.  “What you wanna talk about?”

            “I’ll tell you when we get to the restaurant.”

            “Nah, Junior.  I wanna know what you wanna talk about right now—or else I might not go to the damn restaurant.”

            He paused.  “I want to talk about the people who killed Dad.”

            A shadow passed over her eyes.                 

            “I ain’t all that hungry,” she said.  “I’m taking my ass back to bed.  Later.”

            She tried to close the door.  He stuck his foot between the door and the jamb.

            Her lips tightened.  “Step back.”

            “I know who was behind it, Danny,” he said.

            “You don’t know shit, Junior, and you need to let it go.  Now step back, I mean it.”     

            “Does this man look familiar?”  He showed her the cover of Bishop Prince’s book. 

            She gaped at the bishop’s photo, lips parted. 

            His gut clenched.  He knew, then, that his theory was right. 

            “I finally figured out what’s been bothering me about this guy,” he said.  “Isn’t there a strong resemblance between this man and Reuben?  A
father and son
resemblance?”

            She pulled her gaze away from the photograph, looked at him.  And then, she started to cry.

67

            They went to a nearby Waffle House on Memorial Drive.  Sitting in a corner booth apart from the other diners, they ordered coffee, and Danielle lit a Newport and began to talk.        

            “It all started with this girl I was going to school with, freshman year,” she said.  “Yvette Taylor.  We had a few classes together, so we became cool, eventually.  She was real sweet and smart—good people.  She spent the night at our house a couple times, for slumber parties.  You remember her, Junior?  She had a lil’ crush on you.”

            “Is that right?” Lisa asked, and gave Anthony an inquiring look.

            He shrugged.  “I don’t remember her.  But at that point, you and I were sort of in our own little teenage worlds.  I was playing three sports, and you were hanging out with these girls who you seemed to spend every waking hour with on the telephone.”

            “Anyway, Yvette and her family went to this church in Austell,” Danielle said.  “New Kingdom.  Her folks lived in Decatur, like us, but they would get up early every Sunday to make that long-ass drive all the way across town to Austell.  Yvette said it was the most amazing place—it was really big, and you’d go there feeling broken down and walk out blessed.  It was worth the long drive to them.   

            “She’d talk about it so much that I started to get really curious.  I liked going to our family church, but we’d grown up going there, and it was small.  I wanted to see something different.  So Yvette had a slumber party one Saturday night, with me and two of our other girlfriends.  The next morning, all of us got up and went to New Kingdom with Yvette’s family.”