by Alan Sears
Chapter Twenty
WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the police station, the officers put Pat through the booking procedure. They took his wallet, his shoelaces, his belt, and everything in his pockets. They filled out all the forms and made him sign a release. Every act humiliated him. They placed him in a holding cell. For an hour he sat in the small room wondering who had been confined here before. Normally a disciplined thinker, his mind stumbled over every thought. What would he tell his wife? What would he tell the church? How hurt was Ava?
He lay down on a hard bench and tried to focus. It didn’t help.
An hour later, the door to the holding cell opened, and a man with a large envelope motioned at him. “Let’s go.”
Pat rose. “What’s happening?”
“You’re free to go.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re releasing you. Go home.”
“You mean you’re not filing charges?”
“Look, buddy, if you don’t get out of here, I’ll find some charges to file. You’re done for now, so go on home.”
“Can I use your phone?” Pat said. Under the circumstances, he hadn’t been able to grab his cell phone before agents hauled him out of his office.
The officer rolled his eyes. “Follow me.” When they got to the booking desk, the policeman picked up the phone and dropped it on the counter. He said, “You get one call.”
Pat called home and asked Becky to pick him up at the county jail. “I’ll explain later.” He had to say it three times. She arrived half an hour later. Neither spoke a word on the long drive across town. Pat pleaded that he needed to clear his mind.
Until that moment, Pat had managed to ignore the pain in his chest, but on the way home his ribs were aching so badly he could barely breathe. His kidneys felt on fire. During the arrest, he had been as passive as possible but he still took a knee to the back, had his arms and wrists twisted, and could remember something hitting him in the ribs several times.
He suffered emotional pain as well. How would the media handle this? What would the members of his congregation say, and what would his family back in Owensboro think if they found out he’d been thrown in jail, even if it was for less than two hours? Would he be humiliated in print? What would he say the following Sunday? What about the ministry’s radio and TV broadcasts? How would he go on with his life if this became a bigger deal?
Before the raid on his office, the marshals had alerted the media, and there was a photographer outside the church when the agents pulled Pat from his office and shoved him into the back of the local police car. By the time he and Becky got home, one local television station had aired the story.
“When are you going to tell me what happened?” Becky’s voice carried concern, fear, and anger. “I think I have a right to know.”
“Of course you have a right to know. It’s just that…I’m stunned.”
“I can believe that. So am I.”
“Remember, I told you last night about the marshals and the subpoena.”
“You said you had already pulled much of the material together.”
“I had, and we gathered even more this morning. It’s not everything. I don’t know that we can find notes and original recordings of every sermon and Bible study.”
“And they arrested you for that?” Becky went to the kitchen and removed two bottles of water from the refrigerator and gave one to Pat.
“Yes... well... no. They came back today with the Department of Tolerance and a couple of local police. They barged into the outer office. Ava was standing in the doorway between our two offices. They pushed past her, or maybe they shoved her, it’s not clear in my mind. All I know is, she went down to the floor, her leg went in a funny direction, and she screamed in pain. I rushed to her aid and one of the men grabbed my arm. I pulled away.”
“You pulled away?”
“I wasn’t thinking about being arrested. I was thinking about poor Ava. She sounded hurt. The next thing, I know, I’m on the floor in pain.”
“They beat you?”
“They treated me pretty rough.” Pat stood and removed his shirt. Purple bruises ran down his side. He also had bruises on his arms and wrists from where he was grabbed and cuffed.
“Oh, Pat.” Becky stood and approached him. “Turn around.”
He did. She gasped.
“What?”
“You’ve got a big bruise there, too.” She gently touched his skin. Her touch hurt. “We should take you to urgent care.”
“I’m all right.”
“No you’re not. It sounds like you’re having trouble breathing. Are you?”
“A little.”
“Put your shirt back on.” It was an order.
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled. “I’m so sorry, Becky. I never imagined this.”
“You’ve done nothing wrong.”
“You seem angry.”
“You don’t know the half of it, but I’m not mad at you.” She retrieved her purse. “Come on.”
“Can I use your cell phone?”
“You really want to be making calls?” Becky opened the front door and waited for Pat to tuck in his shirt. He grimaced with each movement. “Wait.” She closed the door. “Take off your shirt again.”
“You’re kidding. Why?”
“Just do it. I’ll be right back.” By the time he removed his shirt, she returned with the digital camera. “Hold out your arms.”
“What are you doing?”
“Taking photos of your injuries.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. They do it on all the lawyer shows.”
PAT CALLED MATT first. As Becky drove, Pat sat in the passenger seat, which he reclined to help his breathing, and held Becky’s cell phone to his ear.
“I have been trying to get you for hours,” Matt said.
“As you heard, I was a little tied up.”
“Tied up? Is that a joke?”
“I default to humor when I’m scared out of my wits.”
“The whole thing scared me pretty good too, and I just heard it over the phone,” Matt said. “This is getting out of hand, Pat. Are you in a car? It sounds like it.”
“My wife is taking me to urgent care.”
“You’re hurt? How badly did they hurt you?”
“I’m okay, just bruised here and there.”
Becky frowned at him.
“This tears it for me, Pat. I’m going to fly down there and get involved.”
“You can’t. You work at the DOJ.”
“I’ll quit tomorrow. As soon as my resignation is official, I’ll become your attorney-of-record.”
“You’re not going to quit your job on my account, Matt. We’re not at that point yet. For now, let me do this my way. I’m not ready to make a federal case of it yet.”
“Is that another joke? It’s already a federal case.”
“Let’s not react, Matt. Let’s be proactive. We don’t know if this is going to go any further. Let’s give it just a little more time. Besides, I have to think about the church.”
“Take my advice, Pat: Think about yourself for a change.”
MATT SET THE phone down and stared at it. He had been wondering if he should leave the DOJ, if he should take a different course in his legal and spiritual life, but he had never uttered the words aloud. Hearing the words “I’ll quit” come out of his mouth filled him with concerns. Somehow he would have to find a way to break the news to Michelle that he was planning to leave his position at the DOJ. After that, he wasn’t at all sure where things might go. There would have to be an exit interview at the office, which could become confrontational if they discovered that he was going to take Pat’s case, but there was no ethical reason he could not. For the moment, however, his only plan was to pray for wisdom and guidance.
PAT SPENT HIS time in the urgent care center thinking about what faced him at the church. Becky sat with him, holding his hand, and rubbing her thumb on his skin until he was c
ertain she’d soon reach bone. It was what she did when she was nervous.
Something was chewing at Pat. Not just the brutal arrest, not just the fact the DTED led by his old friend was poking around in his life, but that he would have to face the church. To be a pastor was to live in an aquarium. A large church like his meant there were hundreds of people peering in.
His first concern centered on the congregation but his mind soon shifted to the Chairman of the Deacons, Keith Gentry. He would have questions. Lots of questions. Lots of accusations. Keith and his wife, Kaylene, had been less than enthusiastic about Pat’s coming to Rogers Memorial. They were afraid he was too young and too conservative. No doubt this news would push them even further away. In fact, he suspected it could even lead to a big division in the church. The tense conversation they had after Pat performed the funeral for the slain pastor wouldn’t help.
“What about Sunday?” Becky asked.
“I don’t know yet.”
“This is Friday; Sunday’s coming.”
“That’s the thing about being a pastor: Sunday is always coming.” He paused. “Maybe I should do all three services. Tell the people what happened.”
“The longer you wait, the more tongues will wag, and…” Becky nodded to a television mounted near the waiting room ceiling. Video of Pat in handcuffs being led to the patrol car played on the screen. Once Pat was in the car, the cameraman stepped closer to the window. Pat’s face filled the screen.
Pat felt as if a spotlight was shining down on him. He scanned the room. No one looked at him. They were both lost in their own set of problems. He looked at Becky. Tears ran along her cheeks.
“It…it must have been horrible for you.”
“It was worse than attending a senior ladies’ luncheon.”
“I’m going to tell them you said that. You think you have bruises now, wait until they get done with you.”
He put his arm around her, which sent pain shooting along his back and down his side.
“I wonder how Ava is doing?” Pat could see her landing on the floor of his office. The mental video filled him with sorrow and anger.
“You’ve tried to call her several times, Pat. You left messages. She’ll contact you when she can.”
“I feel responsible for her injuries.”
“You’re not responsible. Try not to think about it.”
It was good advice. It was also advice impossible to follow.
WHEN PAT ARRIVED at the church on Sunday morning, he was still confused and stiff from the pain, and the Vicodin he had been taking made him drowsy. The doctors found no broken ribs but promised he’d be sore for a few weeks.
Church members and visitors filled the first service and he had no doubt the other two morning services would be filled to capacity as well.
At the 9:30 service, at the beginning of his sermon, he laid his notes aside for a moment and changed directions. He wasn’t up to finishing his six-part series today. He was going to give the congregation a little background on what had happened to him on Friday. Most of the members had seen the news reports and were expecting an explanation. But Pat’s comments were so vague and disjointed he created only more confusion. When he said he was planning on wrapping up the series on “The Insufficiency of Hope” the following week, someone in the service groaned, “Oh, please, no.”
Pat hesitated, confused and unbalanced by the comment. When he tried to return to his sermon topic, he felt dizzy and disoriented. He misquoted the Scripture verse and stumbled over his words. When he tried to ad-lib to get away from his notes, he lost his train of thought completely. Embarrassed, he said, “I’m sorry. I guess I’m still a little out of it.”
The church emptied quickly at the end of the service. No one came forward, but several deacons rushed to the front to speak to him. They asked if he was feeling all right. They said they could see that something was wrong, and they wanted to know if he was ill. Was he on medication?
“Just a prescription of Vicodin.” He took a shallow breath. “We should talk. Let’s go to my study.”
The deacons brought in extra chairs then closed the door.
“I need to bring you up to speed,” Pat said. He remained standing, partly to exert a sense of authority, but mostly because he had less pain when on his feet. “I’m sorry I didn’t let everyone know sooner, but it was only Friday, and I’ve been—distracted. Here’s what happened.”
It took ten minutes for Pat to give the basics about the subpoena, the return of the agents, Ava, the arrest, and his trip to the hospital after being released from the holding cell.
Keith Gentry was the first to speak. “Still, you should have called me. It’s my job to know what’s going on at the church.”
“I was in no condition to call on Friday, not physically, not emotionally.”
“But,” Gentry said, “they delivered the subpoena on Thursday. Why didn’t you call then?”
“I don’t know. I guess I was focused on getting the material together.”
“It only takes a minute to make a phone call. Maybe I could have prevented any of this from happening.”
“How?” Pat asked.
“I don’t know. Now, we’ll never know.”
Howard French asked, “Pastor, why were they here in the first place? I don’t get it.”
Pat shook his head. “I don’t know exactly, Howard. They wanted originals of all my sermons and all the original recordings. I told them that wasn’t possible. I didn’t have them.”
“Come on, Pastor,” Gentry said. “You know why they were here. You’ve been pretty rough on other religions in this last sermon series. You know the government has been cracking down on such things. You brought this on yourself. And Ava got hurt in the process.”
That pierced him like a hot knife. “What happened to Ava shouldn’t have happened. The agents didn’t need to get in my office that quickly. I was just sitting behind my desk.”
“So was the preacher that shot the deputy marshal,” Gentry said. “You know, the one you did the funeral for. He’d been preaching some pretty rough stuff in that little church of his.”
Pat tried to ignore him. “For those of you who are interested, Ava is fine but will be taking some time off. She twisted her knee when she fell and suffered a spiral fracture. She’ll be in a cast for a while. I’m sure she’d enjoy a visit.”
Gentry wasn’t ready to switch gears. “Pastor, you know very well that U.S. Marshals don’t just barge into a church like this unless they’ve got a doggone good reason. I believe what you’re saying, but I have to believe there’s something missing in your story. And we need to get to the bottom of this.”
“I think we should meet,” Howard said.
“We are meeting,” Pat said.
“I mean the deacons.”
Pat stared at him. “You mean only the deacons.”
No one spoke.
Pat shrugged. “Okay. Go ahead. I’m sure the adult classrooms are still unlocked. I’ve got to get ready for the eleven o’clock service.” Pat moved to the door and opened it. The deacons filed out. Pat tried to read their faces. Some seemed burdened, others angry. Alone in his office again, Pat sat in his high-backed leather chair. A moment later he leaned forward, rested his head on his hands, and wished to be someplace else—any place else, and he told that to God.
AFTER THE THIRD and final service of the morning, Gentry and Howard met Pat at the front of the church.
Howard did the speaking but Pat held no doubts that Gentry was doing the pushing. “Pastor, the interests of the church come first, and we need to make some decisions. We think it would be a good idea if you could meet with us again on Wednesday evening, here at the church. Say, six o’clock. Will that be all right?”
Pat said it would. “You know, maybe we should pray together about this—”
“We would love to, Pastor, but we’ve already kept our wives waiting longer than usual. You know how that is.”
Howard and Gentry t
urned and walked away.
Pat stood alone in the large auditorium.
AFTER THE SERVICE, the assistant youth minister, Bobby Douglas, hung around chatting with a group of teenagers as he did every Sunday morning. After shooing the young people home, he headed to the parking lot. As he unlocked the car door, four large men in DTED windbreakers, with big shiny badges and firearms on their hips, surrounded him.
“Are you Robert Douglas?” The man who asked was tall with brown hair cut close to the scalp. His mouth looked incapable of smiling.
“Um, yeah. But I go by Bobby—”
Before Bobby could finish the sentence he was bent over the hood of his car being handcuffed.
“What are you doing? I didn’t do anything wrong.” The metal cuffs closed on his wrists.
“Come with us, please.”
“Where? What?”
They led Bobby to the back seat of a dark sedan and forced him in. Thirty minutes later, Bobby sat in an interview room in the local FBI office, a room DTED had commandeered.
“My name is Special Agent Curtis Young,” the dour-faced man said. “You like the Internet, Bobby.”
“I guess so. Why am I here?” Bobby rubbed his wrists where the cuffs had been.
“You guess so? How about chat rooms, Bobby? You like those?”
Bobby’s blood iced over. “They’re…um…they’re okay.”
“Here’s the thing, Bobby: I’m a very busy man. I got lots on my plate, so I’m going to skip down to the bottom line.” He opened a file. “It says here you have some tax violations; misrepresented your income. That true?”
“I think I need an attorney.”
“It also says here that you once tried to use a false name to open a credit card account.”
“That was a mistake.”
“Mistake? You forgot your name, Bobby?”
“No. It was a college gag. A bunch of us filed for credit cards using the names of guys on the third floor of our dorm. They had been bugging us about making too much noise on the fourth floor. You know. A little rivalry. What’s the worst that could happen? They get a credit card.”
“I see. You were just trying to teach them a lesson, is that it?”
“Sure.”
The agent’s frown deepened, something Bobby didn’t think was possible. “The problem is, Bobby, you used someone else’s name and personal information, then put your own address down. That looks bad, son. Real bad. It kinda looks like identity theft. Is that what you were doing?”
“That was a mistake. We were doing this late at night and I was sleepy. I just put my own address down by mistake.”
“What about the chat rooms, Bobby?” Young studied the material in the folder. “I have transcripts of chats you’ve had with teen girls. They’re pretty graphic, son. Do you think you should be making such offers over the Internet?”
Bobby couldn’t speak.
“Let me tell you why this looks bad. Some of those girls are pretty young—minors, and you’re not a minor, so that sorta makes you a sexual predator.”
Bobby’s face grew hot. “I should talk to an attorney.”
“Sure, sure, that’s your right. You’ll get your call. I just want to make sure you have enough information to talk intelligently to your lawyer—or will you be going for a public defender?”
“I…I…”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s none of my business. Bobby, we got three sets of very serious charges. If you’re tried for any of these offenses, it’s gonna to be a felony conviction. More than likely you’ll be going to prison for a very long time. Do you understand that?”
Agent Young laid out records of phone calls, credit card receipts, and even a few lewd magazines. Just as he was wondering what he was going to tell his parents, and worse, how he would explain all this to the deacons, Young got his attention. “You’re in big trouble, Bobby, but there’s just a chance we may be able to reduce the charges. Maybe we can get these charges thrown out completely, if you can help us out with another matter.”
“What other matter?” He sounded more eager than he intended.
“Your boss, Pat Preston. We want to know everything about this guy, Bobby. What does he do in his spare time? And why does he keep saying those things, preaching that other religions are wrong and sinful? Why does he do that? Doesn’t he know that kind of talk doesn’t fly anymore?”
“You just want answers? That’s all?”
“Pretty much. In a sense, you’ll be a police informant.” Young leaned over the scarred metal table that separated them as if he were about to whisper a secret. “Bobby, you have a right to lawyer up and cut off all communication between us, if that’s what you want to do. I would never interfere with that. Guilty people have a right to a lawyer. You can let your lawyer tell you how much time you’re facing. By the way, he’ll tell you that you’re facing fifteen years in a federal pen, but you don’t have to take my word for it. What I want to do here is offer you an opportunity to make things right. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
“The prosecutor makes the final decision, but we might not even have to take the next step if we can get certain information. If you can tell us the inside scoop on Pat Preston, and what the guy is really up to, and what’s behind all the hate, I think we may be able to do something for you. Would you like that?”
Young leaned back. “Let me tell you what we need to know from you, Bobby. I’m not looking for lies. That won’t help. These are the kinds of things I want you to tell me.” He listed the evidence he needed to nail Pastor Pat on what he called “intent.”
Bobby listened for all he was worth.
