by Steven James
“Do you want to go to church?”
“No.”
“Okay.”
“But Mom would want me to.”
“Is that your way of asking me to take you?”
“No.”
“So you don’t want to go and you’re not asking me to take you.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Okay.”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“Are we gonna go?”
I looked at her over the screen of my laptop. “Listen, there’s a lot going on with this case right now. I have nothing against you going—us going—but it shouldn’t be just because someone else wants us to.”
“She’s my mom. She’s your wife.”
I almost asked Tessa if maybe she could just read the Bible a little here at home or listen to a podcast of a sermon, but that didn’t seem to be a very understanding response.
I’d gotten some solid work in already, and without Mannie talking and the team still searching for any additional videos of suicides, I probably could spare an hour for church with my stepdaughter who was so troubled last night that she was in tears.
Folding up my computer, I said, “We should go.”
“I just told you I didn’t want to. I hate it when Mom takes me.”
“Do you promise to hate it just as much if I take you?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to complain if I take you to church?”
“Obviously.”
“Would you complain if I didn’t?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay. Let’s get changed.”
She was quiet for a few seconds, then said, “Can I drive?”
“That would be a no.”
* * *
+++
Blake knew something was wrong.
Mannie never would have gone this long without checking in if he could help it.
Considering that he was such a high-profile suspect, Blake thought it likely that if he’d been apprehended, word would’ve hit the cable news cycle or the wire, but so far there hadn’t been anything about his arrest or any homicides of John Does fitting his description. But then again, the news couldn’t always be trusted.
Additionally, the timing of his disappearance was not ideal, not with the distribution happening on Tuesday and all that needed to be done before then.
One of his men, Aaron Jasper, had been siphoning money into his own accounts and, if the intel Blake had received was accurate, Aaron had been to see the Matchmaker—something that was strictly off-limits for Blake’s employees.
It was time to make an example of Mr. Jasper and to have a word with Ibrahim, who seemed to be keeping a few too many secrets himself—both situations that Mannie was typically more adept at handling than Blake was.
Until last summer, Blake would have leveraged his two contacts in the FBI for information about Mannie’s possible apprehension, but since then, one had been killed by terrorists and the other had been arrested, severely hampering the amount of intel he was able to get from the Bureau.
However, he still had a compromised NSA employee that he could contact, and now he reached out to him to see if he could find out what’d happened to his most trusted associate.
16
Knowing how conservative Christie’s church was, I went with a tie, which Tessa smirked at when she saw me.
On the way out the door, she asked, “So did you find out what a dotterel is yet?”
“Actually, that sort of slipped off my radar screen.”
“I’ll give you a hint—it’s a trip of dotterels, remember? That’s a huge clue.”
“A trip. Okay, got it. I’ll look into it.”
* * *
+++
Christie attended a small storefront church, which, on a good Sunday, might have sixty people in attendance.
Apparently, this was not a good Sunday.
When the service started, twenty-five people were there, including the pastor and the young dreadlocked woman who was working at the sound board. I knew the number of people because Tessa chose seats in the back of the room, which was fine by me because in settings like this, I liked to draw as little attention to myself as possible.
As a kid, I’d grown up going to church with my parents but fell out of the habit as an adult until I met up with Christie. This weekend, her pastor had swapped pulpits with Dr. Trayvon Williams, a semiretired black preacher who’d grown up in the south and had only moved to New York City a couple of years ago. Though I hadn’t met him in person, I’d heard him once when I’d come with Christie, and she’d filled me in about his background.
I liked his interactive preaching style a lot more than the droning litanies of the usual pastor.
So at least that was in our favor this morning.
After a few songs, Dr. Williams took the pulpit and gave a couple of opening remarks, including welcoming “any and all visitors who might be with us here on this fine Lord’s Day.”
Then, after a reminder about an upcoming Thanksgiving meal for the homeless, he launched right into his sermon. “Are you weary, brothers and sisters?” he asked us. “Can I hear an amen if you know what it’s like to feel weary in this weariful world?”
The congregation gave him an “Amen.”
“Is anyone heavy-laden with cares and fears and worry from the drain of everyday life? Is anyone here heavy-laden today? Amen?”
They amened him.
“Jesus said that you could come to him for rest. His yoke is what?”
This time not everyone seemed to know the answer, but three enthusiastic Amen-ers from the front shouted, “Easy!”
“And his burden is what?”
“Light!” More people joined in this time.
It went on from there—Dr. Williams encouraging us to bring our burdens to Jesus, to cast them upon him, for he cares for us, and that “a bruised reed shall he not break, and smoking flax shall he not quench.”
I took that to mean that even if someone’s faith was weak, Jesus would accept them; that even if their soul was bruised, he wouldn’t reject them.
That message carried encouragement with it.
And yet, throughout the sermon, I kept thinking of what else Jesus had said: that those who follow him must take up their cross to do so. I knew those words referred to the disciples’ willingness to be persecuted and even crucified, but how is carrying a cross to your own crucifixion an easy yoke and a light burden? Does Jesus take your cares or add to them?
It seemed like such an obvious contradiction that I figured I was missing something in the way the two teachings fit together.
“The Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered,” Dr. Williams declared. “This means, brothers and sisters, that some grief is so heavy and some sorrow so deep and some pain so raw that no words in any language that exists now, no language that has ever existed, no language that ever will exist, can truly express it. But God’s Spirit can, amen?”
“Amen,” came the reply, a bit more solemn this time, reflecting the more serious mood of his statement.
“Those emotions, those questions, your hurts and your heartache—the Spirit of God is aware of your suffering and prays to the Father to ask him to remove it, to heal it, to unknot it from your heart. That’s the intercession that the Spirit gives. Those are the groans which cannot be uttered by human lips, the ones the Spirit of the Lord specializes in.”
While there are certain teachings of Christianity that remained inexplicable to me—the cross-carrying, burden-lifting paradox, for instance—what Dr. Williams was saying about groans that words could not express, that I could relate to.
I’d felt groans like that arise from my own heart. I’d searched futilely for the words to express my heartache but found
only the glaring ineloquence of pain.
Was it possible that God’s Spirit understood me so well that he knew even better than I did how to express the hidden, thorny terrors rooted in my soul? If so, that was the kind of God I needed. That was the kind of God I could love.
After the service, while Tessa and I were on our way to the door, Dr. Williams made his way over, somewhat enthusiastically, to greet us.
“Good to see you, Tessa,” he said.
“Yeah,” she said noncommittally.
He looked at me with a touch of warmth and curiosity, then extended his hand. “I’m Dr. Williams.”
I was about to shake his hand and introduce myself, but before I could do either, Tessa said, “That’s Dr. Bowers.”
The PhD in geospatial investigation didn’t come up much in my job and I tended not to mention it.
“He’s my stepdad,” she added.
A wide grin. “Ah, so you’re the lucky man who married Christie.”
“I am.” We shook hands. “I appreciated your sermon.”
“But?”
“But?”
“Was that hesitation I heard in your voice a moment ago? You appreciated my sermon . . . but . . .”
This guy was better at reading people than half of the profilers at Quantico. I didn’t really want to question him or put him on the spot, so I simply said, “It was thought-provoking, what you said about Jesus wanting to carry our burdens for us.”
“We all have burdens.”
“Yes, we do.”
Though he waited for me to go on, I didn’t.
“Well, if God’s word spoke to you today, then praise the Lord. And where is Christie on this blessed day?”
“She’s at a monastery,” Tessa said.
That took him aback. “A monastery?”
“Yeah. One with, like, real monks. Nighttime chanting. Weird haircuts. The whole deal.”
“It’s a spiritual retreat,” I explained. “Don’t worry, she’s not planning to join up.”
“Or become a nun,” Tessa inserted.
“Yes, yes, of course,” Dr. Williams said. “Well, say hello to her when you see her and be sure to greet her in the glorious name of Jesus.”
* * *
+++
When Tessa and I were outside, I asked if she’d enjoyed the service.
“No. I told you I didn’t want to come.”
“You’re welcome.” My phone vibrated with an incoming text. “But are you glad we came?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Perfect.” I unpocketed my cell and looked at the screen. The text was from the assistant director: Call me. Mannie wants to talk.
“Tessa, can you wait for me in the car? I need to make a quick call.”
She walked off, folding up the church bulletin and stuffing it into her back pocket.
I put the call through to DeYoung. “What do we know?”
“Mannie says he’ll talk, but only to you.”
“What? Why me?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. He gave us ninety minutes, said that after that he’s gonna ask for a lawyer. I need you here ASAP.”
“I have my stepdaughter with me.” I was thinking aloud. I knew that with a time window that tight, it would be tough to drop her off at home, which was in the opposite direction.
For a moment, I contemplated hailing a cab or having her take the subway—she was certainly used to getting around the city that way—but decided that, considering how upset she’d been last night, I didn’t want to send her home alone. She could wait for me in the lobby at the Field Office—she was always bugging me to let her see the place anyway. She might even think it was cool to hang out there.
I figured we could grab a late lunch after I spoke with Mannie. At least if I brought her with me she would know I cared about her. Last night there wasn’t much I could do to encourage her and let her know that I was here for her, but this morning there was.
“Patrick? You were saying? Your stepdaughter?”
“Never mind. From here, I’m guessing it’ll take me thirty to thirty-five minutes to get to the Field Office.”
“Cut that in half. I want you here ten minutes ago.”
17
Christie made her way through the woods, following the trail that skirted along the edge of one of the ponds on the monastery’s property. Today, the water looked deep and dark, like the surface of some vast obsidian ocean, though she guessed that, based on the size of the pond, it was probably no more than eight or ten feet deep at the most.
In the rippling wind, the water had a troubled, leathery look to it, almost like a bat’s wings. Nervous waves splashed impatiently against the shore.
An old ladder, rickety and slick with moss, had been rigged up against the hill’s abutment to help hikers climb up to where the trail continued twelve feet or so above her.
The rain began as she was ascending the ladder. Large, random drops of water that splattered dime-sized onto her arms and her back as she climbed. She had to pay careful attention to her feet to keep them from sliding off the rungs.
The mud at the ladder’s top was worn smooth from pilgrims who’d ventured to see the statues of the Virgin Mary, the disciples, and Jesus, but with the help of a nearby branch, Christie managed to get past the slick spot without sliding back down the hillside.
As the rain picked up, she tucked her hands into her pockets and felt the note she’d written just a few weeks ago, the poem that she’d jotted down at church when the pastor’s sermon wandered, as it was apt to do, into the subject of abstaining from alcohol.
The fact that Jesus had turned dozens of gallons of water into wine just to keep the party going—and good wine, to keep the people drinking—seemed to be lost on him. And by her minister’s ample size, it was clear that gluttony didn’t figure into his list of deadly sins, although drinking a beer or sipping a glass of wine—which Christie tended to enjoy with dinner—topped his list.
And so, as his sermon detoured, so did her attention, and she’d written a short poem, one that she hadn’t shared with anyone yet. But it’d meant something to her, and she’d intended to pass it along to a friend who had pneumonia. In the end, though, her healing had come before Christie could send the poem and she’d never gotten around to typing it up or mailing it.
She saw several statues ahead of her in the forest, and it didn’t take long for her to traverse the trail and come to Mary.
Previous retreatants had left flowers at Mary’s feet, some had even slipped notes into the envelopes the monastery provided at the front desk and had placed them under rocks near the base of the statue.
Though she was momentarily tempted to read what others had left here, Christie held back, reminding herself that those notes were for the Lord or his mother, and not for her.
The now-constant tapping of rain across the forest accompanied her, but here beside the statues, enough branches spread above her that she was protected somewhat from the coming storm.
She removed the poem and read it silently.
God can handle all your needs,
mend the heart that hurts and bleeds,
give the lonely something true
that changes lives and makes them new.
Jesus heals the fractured soul,
makes it breathe,
makes it whole,
gives us hope when hope is gone,
breaks the darkness, offers dawn,
to all who follow, all who dare—
the door is open, love is there.
She tucked it inside the envelope she’d brought with her and sealed it shut.
And stared at the envelope.
But was it true?
Did God handle all our needs?
Though it might have been too hard for her to admit to anyon
e else, she honestly wasn’t sure anymore.
So many needs for so many people seemed unmet—the comfort for her friend Angie, a divorcée who was sliding deeper by the day into clinical depression. Drugs might handle her needs, but it sure didn’t seem like God was. Or the needs of millions in Africa for clean water—where was God when it came to helping them? Or those who’d been given the diagnosis that changes everything—how was Jesus healing them?
Her.
How was he healing her?
She found a rock that had no note beneath it and was about to place her envelope with the others there at the statue’s base, but stopped.
Truthfully, where was God?
Was he really anywhere at all?
She looked up at the lifeless statue, shiny with rain, then let go of the rock and let it splat into the mud beside her foot.
Then, Christie ripped up the envelope and the poem inside it and let the pieces of paper fall unceremoniously to the ground, where they would eventually rot and turn to soil whether there was a benevolent God watching over them or not.
18
“You know how fast I drove on the way over here?” I said to Tessa as we pulled into the parking garage beneath the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.
“And how you ignored half the traffic laws in the city?”
“Yeah.” I found a spot. Parked. “Don’t drive like that. Consider that trip a teachable moment.”
“Do as you say, not as you do.”
“Right.”
“Stellar parenting technique there.”
“Thanks.”
We exited the car.
“I still don’t get it,” she said. “What am I supposed to do while you’re in there? Can’t I wait in your office or something?”
“When you become an FBI agent, then you can come see my office.”
“Ha. Don’t they ever have, like, a ‘bring your daughter to work day’ or something?”
It struck me that she’d said “daughter” instead of “stepdaughter.”
