Enigma (3 page)

Mr. Enigma—or I suppose Ms. was a possibility—had a strong attachment to
The Cross of Changes
. I could easily understand how this stream of oblique references to wrongdoing and the inevitable working of justice could make the Richardsons nervous. Some intuition whispered at me about that, but I couldn’t make sense of what it wanted me to see.

I closed my eyes to listen better. Nothing came for a while, but I’d learned how to wait.

When I’d settled into the stillness, I glanced down at the papers in my lap. A line about playing games with ones who loved you called to me from the last page. Okay, good. That felt right—a clue that family issues might be at the heart of this case. Not very specific, but a working start. Maybe there was more.

I closed my eyes again, and Colin showed up, fresh and eager. Or not Colin, but his face reminding me of what I wanted, what I’d thrown away by playing games with one who had loved me.

“I’m so fucking sorry, Robbie,” I whispered into the hole in my heart, knowing there would be no answer, since he’d packed up his stuff and moved out over fifteen years ago.

Again I saw him standing sadly at the front door holding his last box, his tears all cried out weeks earlier.

“You love him more than me, babe,” he said, pointing to the bottle in my hand. “I wish I still loved you like I used to, but I just don’t. Can’t. I can’t compete, and I can’t stay to watch you kill yourself.” And then he was gone.

Even though I was five years sober when he and Eric got married, I couldn’t go to the ceremony. I couldn’t bear to see the man I threw away marry someone else, knowing that I could have had him if only I had….

If only. That was pure bullshit. If nothing. I hadn’t, and I was living with the consequences. If I kept swigging from my favorite barrel of self-pity, a tumbler of booze might not be far off, and that was one hell I did
not
want to revisit. They say in AA you learn not to regret the past nor close the door on it. Apparently, I wasn’t finished working on that.

I stared at the papers again for a long time. They felt incomplete.

Was this really blackmail, or something else? Knowledge of wrongdoing was clearly implied, most explicitly in the third letter:
“Who have you been screwing?”
But was that literal or figurative? Then again, maybe the blackmailer was just preparing the ground for a demand more specific than “
soon it’s time to pay.”
Regardless, he/she was definitely sending loaded messages to the Richardsons. Enough to make Howard Richardson call his high-powered, and no doubt very expensive, lawyer.

I needed to listen to the music, see if I could get some other lead from it. I phoned Pete at my favorite indie music store, Wax Trax. He had a used CD, and I asked him to hold it for me until I could pick it up. Pete was eager to give me the whole history of the album over the phone, but I asked him to hold off until I could get it in person.

As soon as I hung up, Kommen called. He’d regained his aggressive tone, but to his credit, he kept most of the sneer out of his voice. I had appointments tomorrow with the Richardson men at his office, Howard at nine and James at one-thirty. Colin would arrange any other appointments I needed, and I should call him directly.

Finally some traction. This was good. I headed out to Wax Trax for the album, and Pete’s enthusiastic history lesson.

* * * *

Next morning, Colin met me in the foyer right on time. He was so deliciously puppy-eager, I began to worry about what I might do if he was hitting on me. Neither of us needed that complication.

I opened to a quick look at his aura. It’s hard to describe what I do for that, even though I have some control over it. I kind of expand the energy around my head and shoulders, making space, and relax my eyes until my vision shifts—pretty much like when an optometrist clicks away one of those obscuring lenses and suddenly you can see things you couldn’t before.

Colin wasn’t flirting, although I thought I saw the warm glow of attraction. His aura was more professional than mine, congruent with his full-bore Eagle Scout mode. The kid just loved helping others. I understood.
In my own more jaded way
. I hoped he wouldn’t get too badly hurt for his natural generosity, even though I knew it was inevitable.

Odd. I was both relieved and offended he wasn’t flirting with me. I’m impossible to please sometimes.

This time we marched directly to the elevator, and went up to the big shots’ floor. Once inside Kommen’s office, Colin led me past the massive desk and through a door behind it into a spacious sitting room. He backed away, and there was a soft click as he closed the door behind me.

Kommen and the Reverend Howard Richardson sat next to each other in a pair of overstuffed leather chairs against the far wall. They’d been talking for a while, I could feel it. The air between them hung thick with their conversation.

I looked around. Very comfy in a bland way. Private. The place shouted with whispers, it was so full of secrets. A wall of glass looked south and west over the Platte, and off through the tawny Denver haze to the mountains. On the opposite wall, a kitchen and fully-stocked wet bar waited for customers.

Neither one stood as I crossed the room, but I stretched out my hand to Richardson and waited.

After a beat of silence, Kommen introduced us. “Reverend Richardson, this is Rhys Morgan, our investigator.” The reverend stayed put as he shook my hand. His grip was firm and crisp with a fast release. Very professional, and not as oily as I’d expected. But underneath the smooth polish, panic sparked off his hand, stinging mine. Sometimes, it still physically hurt to be an empath.

Richardson reached up to caress his hair into place. He needn’t have worried. It remained fixed in silver perfection. His whole face was so smooth I figured it had benefited from a little cosmetic surgery.

I gave him a polite smile. “Please, call me Russ. Nobody uses Rhys.”

Richardson turned businesslike. “Well, Russ, thank you for your help with this unfortunate business.” He turned on a just-between-us grin. “I hope Andrew hasn’t been too hard on you. He’s my fiercest protector in the entire congregation, and I know he can be, ah, intimidating.”

So Kommen was a congregant. That explained a lot about his behavior, including his fear at losing another PI while his spiritual leader panicked.

I sat on the near end of a cream leather-covered love seat, where I could see both of them at the same time. “I’m sure he’s doing the best he can to protect you and your ministry, Reverend. And I’m not intimidated in the least.” I saw that register in both.

“Good for you. Good for you.” Richardson sat back in his chair and raised his hands, palms turned slightly out and up, a gesture of openness, welcome, and benediction all in one. “You have some questions for me.”

“Yes.” I pulled out my pocket recorder and set it on the coffee table in front of me.

“No recordings. Absolutely not.” Kommen’s voice dropped the temperature in the room about fifteen degrees.

I raised an eyebrow at Richardson, who shrugged an apology. I put the recorder back in my pocket and took out a pen and notepad. “Okay, no recording. This will take more time, then. I’m pretty slow at taking notes.”

I got myself set and shifted my vision so I could watch Richardson’s aura. “I’m told that these threatening messages are blackmail against your son. Is that your take?”

“It’s the only explanation that makes any sense to me.” His aura spiked. A serious lie. I nodded studiously, and made a note.

“What’s your most likely scenario?”

“I believe someone wants to harm me and my ministry by discrediting my son.”

He fixed me with an intense gaze worthy of a Biblical prophet surviving in the desert on locusts and honey. “As you know, since he was delivered from the chains of homosexual desire,” he intoned, dragging out the bad word as HOE-moe-SEX-shul, “he’s become my right arm in Abundant Life and Gospel Ministry Church.”

My body contracted at his pronunciation, as if I were fifteen again, braced against my own father’s righteous fury pouring from the pulpit. It’s sad, in a way, how the body can remember the pain of darkness long after the soul has found the light switch.

“How might they attack your son and your ministry, Reverend?”

“You don’t need to answer that, Howard,” Kommen cut in. He glared at me. “That’s your job, to find out how.”

“With all due respect, Mr. Kommen,” I said, putting more emphasis on
due
than was polite. His aura darkened. He got it. “That’s not true. You hired me to find out who’s sending the letters. It seems to me that understanding how the letters might be effective in doing damage to your client could yield some idea of who might be behind them.”

“Now, Andrew,” Richardson’s mellifluous pulpit voice wafted sweet as the balm of Gilead across Kommen’s darkening face. “I’m sure the man means well. We must let him do his job no matter how uncomfortable that makes us.”

Kommen’s hands turned into claws on the arms of his chair, but he said nothing.

Richardson turned to face me, his saintly smile radiant. “If someone were to cast believable doubt on my son’s commitment to the true path of Christ, it truly would be like cutting off my right arm.” He shook his head with ineffable sorrow at the prospect. “All we’ve built together would fall into terrible jeopardy.”

“Specifically, you mean cast doubt on his sexual orientation?”

“Yes, in spite of his miraculous healing years ago, and his exemplary life as a family man ever since.”

I nodded, and made another note. “And he’s never, um, slipped up in that?”

“Absolutely not. Never. His healing is full and complete, praise the Lord.” A significant lie. And behind it, something even darker, I couldn’t tell what. That warranted much more exploration when I could find a way to do it.

"When did your son go into treatment?”

“Let’s see, that would have been 1993. November.”

“And he left treatment when?”

“Just before Easter of the following year.” Richardson’s voice swelled, lofty as a pipe organ. “He was resurrected from Satan’s darkness on that blessed anniversary by the blood of Our Savior, and the stone over his tortured heart was rolled away by angels.” He cleared his throat, as if stopping himself from a longer sermon.

I forced myself to write slowly as a way of countering my nausea. Easter, 1994. Check date.

Howard Richardson’s bloated certainty was suffocating, and some claustrophobic part of me wanted to end this interview so I could run away and breathe again. But I’d committed to the case. I’d never bolted before just because I didn’t like the person I was supposed to be helping, and I wouldn’t now. Keeping a promise was bedrock to me, part of my living amend; a sober man being in the world the way it is. I couldn’t betray that.

I changed focus to watch his aura. “I’m told the letters were delivered in disturbing ways. How did the first one arrive?”

“It was in the inter-office mail.” True.

“Envelope?”

“Yes. Addressed to me.” True.

“Who can I talk to about your inter-office mail system?”

“Our office manager, Marianna Stokes. I’ll arrange it.”

“Thank you.” I wrote down her name.

I decided to push the good reverend a bit more. “If the letter was addressed to you, why would you think the threat was directed at James? Could it have been about something else?”

“The threat is to me, using James.” Richardson’s aura spiked. Anger as well as fear. Something there he didn’t want to talk about. Maybe this wasn’t really about his son at all.

“Did you recognize the source of the words?”

“No. I simply recognized them as a threat.”

“All the messages are lyrics from an album by a group called Enigma, called
Cross of Changes
.” Kommen must have already briefed him on that, because Richardson didn’t even blink.

“It gets even more relevant,” I continued. “The album was released in December of 1993, while your son was undergoing reparative therapy. Do you think James knew about this music? Any lover he’d had before his therapy would certainly learn about it right away. The album was a big hit.”

“James would never listen to such soulless rubbish!” Richardson’s voice cracked, along with his composure. “He enjoys Christian music exclusively. In fact, shortly after he joined us in ministry he took charge of our outreach, music, and publishing programs. He singlehandedly spearheaded our very successful efforts to extend our offerings into Latin America, including drawing on Latin American music to reach those wonderful people’s hearts.”

I felt obliged to offer a slightly different perspective. “The most popular song on the album, “Return to Innocence,” was used as the theme song of the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games. I doubt the IOC considered it rubbish.”

I gazed at Richardson. “Are you sure you didn’t receive another note, one that contained the lyrics to that particular song?”

“Absolutely.” He was telling the truth.

“Well, then, I’ll bet you a dollar that it’s on the way. Maybe Enigma has saved that song for last. How did letter number two arrive?”

“It was mailed to my home. That address is closely held information, but this Enigma knows it.” His aura writhed into coils as he spoke. Enigma knew where he lived, and that terrified him.

“How closely? Could you make a list of who knows your home address, or is it more generally known than that?”

“More general. Still, those who know would never divulge it.”

“You do realize, then, that someone you trust probably sent that letter.”

Richardson didn’t respond, but his aura twisted and sparked with fear. I let the silence stretch a little. “Letter number three?

Richardson cleared his throat. “I have a modest bathroom in my office at ministry headquarters. It was taped to the shower door.”

I looked at Kommen, then at Richardson. “Another indication Enigma has close access to your life, Reverend, or at very least an accomplice among your staff.”

“It seems that way, even though most of them have been with me for years.” He shook his head at the sad likelihood of such betrayal.