Salvation Boulevard (26 page)

She got silent again.

“Talk to me, Gwen,” I said. “We can straighten this out. But there are things I have to know.”

“He said he was worried about you. That you were going off doing strange things.”

“And then you said?”

“He asked if I knew what you were up to. He said he wanted to help, to watch out for you. I said I didn't know. Then he asked me if you were still messing around with that Nazami thing. I said you weren't. That's what you told me. That you were going into the city to hand in your final bill because the law firm had dropped the case. That you were just looking for some missing girl.”

“And then?”

“He asked how I knew. I said, well, it had something to do with Nicole Chandler. That you . . . you asked me to find out about her.”

“Then what happened?”

“Nothing. That's all. He said he would try to get Paul to speak to you, bring you back to your senses, whatever was going on.”

I sat back, the tension leaving my body. It was alright. Gwen hadn't betrayed me, not really. Now it was just . . . the other problems. And if Gwen and I were alright, I would deal with them. “My mistake,” I said. “I'm sorry. I should have told you the truth.”

“About that woman.”

“It's not about that.”

“Well, that's what I want to know about.”

“She came on to me. I said no.”

“And that's it, and she called our house three times.”

“What it's about—”

“And where did you go, Sunday night, after we made love?”

“I went out to think.”

“To think? And where did this thinking take place?”

“In the desert, down southwest of here. Other side of the city. I had to think things through.”

“What things? Us? Her?”

“Nazami,” I said.

“You said—”

“I tried,” I said. “But it bothered me. I was going to let it go, then during the service, it hit me. The murdered professor, MacLeod, had a girlfriend. Nobody knew her name, but he called her his ‘own special angel.' And there were our special angels, bigger than life, up there on the screens. Every once in awhile, I hear rumors about Plowright . . . . ”

“Never. He's like a father to them. What he does is sacred. Paul Plowright would never, ever do anything like that.”

“So I got some pictures of the angels and showed them to someone on campus, and she said, that's her, that's MacLeod's mystery girl. And then I showed it to you, and you said, that's Nicole Chandler. And dear Nicole is missing. Not just from choir but from her home and her job. And tell me, when did you speak to Jerry?”

“Around eight. I met him on the way in.”

“And three hours later, a man I met in Ahmad Nazami's cell, who claimed to be Homeland Security, is trying to kill me.”

“It's your own fault. Your own stupid, stubborn fault,” she said, sharper and angrier than I've ever heard her. “You're ruining our lives. Pastor told you. Jeremiah, who only wants to help us, told you, and you, you won't listen.”

“Shut the hell up,” I yelled at her. “Are you my wife? Are you?”

She didn't answer.

“I made a decision here. ‘Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord.'”

“And if you're wrong?”

“‘For the husband is the head of the wife'”—I went on, continuing to cite Ephesians 5—“‘even as Christ is the head of the church. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in
every thing
.'”

“If you defy our pastor, then you are leaving Christ. And you will be lost,” she said, defiant and adamant. “A wife does not have to submit to a husband who does not submit to Christ.”

“No man can tell me, or you, how to relate to God. It's a personal relationship. That's why we don't have a pope. And Plowright is just a man. And so were the popes in Rome. They cheated and stole and whored and had their bastards, and there's no reason to think that Plowright can't be doing that.”

“Never. Paul would never do things like that.”

“Well, he's doing something. There's a man going to prison who shouldn't, and there's one man dead, and there could've been two more today, and one of them would have been Angie.”

“You've gone crazy, Carl. I don't know if it's that woman or you're drinking again, but you've gone crazy, accusing Paul of murder.”

“Paul? Why do you keep calling him Paul,” I asked. “How close are you to Paul?”

“How dare you? I'm a wife and a good wife. How dare you? I'm not the one who lied and strayed.”

“Alright, if you're my wife and a good one, obey me in this.”

“No, no, you are so wrong.”

“Gwen,” I said in despair, no longer in anger, “you must.”

She looked at me in a way that I'd never wanted her to look at me. “You are the one who is defying the ways of the Lord. And you are bringing destruction down upon us.”

When I got back to Jorge's, I looked in on Angie. She was sleeping peacefully. I went into the other bedroom, drained of everything and grateful for a bed. I kicked my running shoes off and lay down for just a moment, planning to get back up and have a shower before I slept. But I didn't get back up.

There were a lot of dreams. The one I remember is the one where Manny showed up. He said, “It's good to have your daughter safe.”

Naturally, I agreed.

“Though you probably shouldn't consider any place around you as safe.”

“I feel like I'm stumbling through the darkness,” I said. “Like in the desert, but worse. I know there are things happening out there that I need to know about, but they're way in the dark, and I don't have any idea what they are.”

“That's what humans do, stumble through the darkness. You have no idea, Carl, how much darkness there is, how much we are blind to. That's why seeing the light is such a precious experience.”

“Does it matter if the light is the true light? Can there be a false light?”

“Any light will do,” he said gently. “After all, we have to sail on.” While I was considering that, he said, “I didn't know all this would happen. Sorry.”

“You really didn't know?” I asked, remembering our first conversation about the case and then his rabble-rousing on top of the Mercedes.

“Well, sometimes we don't know what we know.”

“Yeah, right,” I said.

“I was rereading the transcripts of your conversation with Jorge,” he said.

“There are transcripts?”

He gave me one of those “don't be naïve” looks.

“But with the music and the waterfall?” Their noise should have defeated any surveillance.

Another look: of course not from where he was.

“I thought it was interesting that he described himself as an ‘expert in treachery.'”

That woke me. If CTM was after me, it might occur to Jorge to offer me up in trade. I got up and went to check on Angie. I wanted to lie down beside her to make sure that I could protect her, but she's not a little girl anymore and that didn't seem right. I went back to my room, took the blanket and a pillow from the bed, got my gun, lay down in the hallway, and slept on the floor in front of her door.

 

In the morning, I called my half-brother, Arthur. We're not very close. We only lived as brothers for four years or so. He disapproved of me in my wilder years, and even now his mild Methodism disdains what he considers the excesses of the evangelical community. But family is family, and he's a good man. He and his wife, Veronica, agreed to have Angie as their guest, more willingly and happily than I expected. I got online and booked her on the first flight I could get to St. Louis, then called them back, and they said they'd be at the airport to meet her flight.

I explained to Angie that I needed to keep her safe. “What about Mom?” she asked, meaning Gwen, of course.

“She'll be okay,” I said.

“I want to call her,” she said.

I thought about that. It was all so insane. Like a drunk or an addict, I wouldn't stop. But to what was I a servant? Could it get sorted out in the end? It didn't seem so. But I said, “Yes, of course, you can call her.”

Angie smiled. Now it was all alright. I would die for her smiles. But I was on a course that would destroy them.

“But,” I said, “you can't tell her where you are.”

“Why not?”

“Because . . . . ” Because she told the men who tried to kill us where we were. And she might well do so again. Or they might snatch Angie to force me to come to them. “Because . . . , ” I said, “you know about wiretaps and all?”

“Of course,” she said. What would TV drama be without them.

“Well, the people who came after us might be listening.”

“Are they the government?”

“No. I found that out for certain. In fact, you can't tell anyone where you are, not your friends either. I'll just tell the school you're out sick.”

“I'm not sick.”

“Okay, I'll try to figure out something they'll accept that's not a lie. That you won a trip across America.”

 

I knew a motel with weekly rates that was happy to take cash. I booked a room. It had a view of a parking lot and an expressway.

I snuck back home while Gwen was at work and packed a couple of suitcases. The house was mine. Maybe she'd get half the value, maybe not. Maybe Jesus would touch her heart, and she'd see the light, and we'd live happily ever after. Skepticism was entering my view of the Christian way of life and marriage we'd both sworn to live by. It seemed that the husband wasn't the head of the house after all, just like in any secular humanist, atheistic, falling-apart, modern American family.

After I settled into my box of a room, my clothes neatly stashed in the closet and dresser, I called Teresa.

She was happy to hear from me, though she was upset that I'd taken so long to get back to her.

“Do you want me to find your husband's book for you?” I asked.

“Yes, absolutely,” she said.

“Do you understand how expensive an investigation is? For starters, I want to do a real crime scene analysis. Have they cleaned it yet?”

“The office? No. Tomorrow, I think.”

“Well, stop them.”

“Alright. When will I see you?”

“As a CSI, I get a hundred and fifty an hour. For the rest, sixty an hour. If you hired me through an attorney, he'd be charging you probably two, two fifty, and a hundred. It easily gets up into the thousands. Are you prepared for that?”

“The university,” she said. “They were going to pay for the crime scene stuff anyway, and the stolen book, that was on their property, so they're sort of responsible. I'll ask them. I'm sure I can get most of it.”

“Fine then. The first thing I'll want to do is go to the scene.”

“I'll meet you there,” she said.

“No. It's slow, meticulous, boring work. I want to do it without interruptions.”

“But I know things. I can help.”

“You really want the book?”

“Yes, yes, I do.”

“Then let's be professional about this.”

 

I had copies of the original crime scene analysis from back when they thought it was a suicide, before Ahmad Nazami had turned up and supposedly confessed. There were photographs, sketches, and notes. It had been a relatively cursory job. Giving the police the benefit of the doubt, you could say that was because it seemed so cut-and-dried.

Worse, they hadn't come back when the conclusion had changed. Possibly because the integrity of the scene had been largely destroyed by then. All sorts of people had trampled in and
out, the body had been removed, and who knows what else had transpired. So anything they found on a second go would face serious challenges in court. Still, they should have.

Since an independent investigation had already been authorized and the money earmarked, Teresa got the go-ahead. A full investigation and a search for the missing book was another matter, requiring an additional appropriation. It was being considered.

This time, I brought a campus security officer to be the witness. I record what I'm doing, as I go, with a voice-activated Dictaphone, and I use a JVC GR-X5 for both video and stills. When we arrived, I announced my name and his, the location, date, and time. I noted that I had been there previously with the widow of the deceased and that she had moved certain items pursuant to the new investigation, the search for the manuscript. Then I videoed the scene.

After that, using the police and campus security photos, I restored the scene as best as I could to how it had been before Teresa had moved things. I wore latex gloves throughout the process. Then I divided the room into quadrants and began a search and an examination.

I began with the desk and the computer and dusted for fingerprints, especially on the keyboard. Both Nathaniel and Teresa had touched the keys, but I was hoping to find a third set that belonged to neither of them. Perhaps Plowright's or Hobson's. No matter how contaminated the crime scene was, there would be no explaining how their prints got on MacLeod's computer. I dusted the screen and the cord that had gone to the backup device.

There were lots of prints.

They would have to be sent to a fingerprint analyst, along with Nathaniel's and Teresa's, for elimination. And Ahmad's. If his were there, it would implicate him. If they weren't, it would tend to be exculpatory. Any that remained would point to someone else.