Gavin English Thrillers

by Ken Lindsey

  I needed to get to the grocery store. If Beverly wasn’t home by the time I got there and did a little snooping, I decided I would call David. He’s the Lieutenant of Reno’s Police Department, so even if we hadn’t reached the missing persons threshold yet, he could set something unofficial in motion.

  I hoped we wouldn’t get even that far, but I knew if we did, the next step would be the church. Ford lives on the property. He works there. He does all his church… stuff there.

  Shit. I had no idea what else he might do with his time. Did he golf? Build houses for the homeless? Was he a secret drift driver, hell-bent on changing the world of illegal street racing?

  If I’d been hired to follow him, I’d know these things. Instead, I’d been hired by him to follow some nice woman he had a holy vendetta against. Because of that, I know she likes dirty talk, but I know nothing about him.

  “Hey, Gav. Are you okay?” Kara had crept back into the office while I was wasting time mentally flogging myself.

  “I’m not sure. Mr. Anderson is worried that his wife might be missing.”

  Surprise and worry registered equally in her delicate features and she walked to the desk. “Why? Did something happen?”

  “She called him from the store to tell him that she thought she saw Pastor Ford, and now she isn’t answering her phone.”

  “Maybe she’s driving?”

  “Probably.” I stood and offered up a half-hearted smile, “Still, I’m gonna run to the store and see if she’s there. Clark said he’ll call the office when she turns up at home.”

  Kara nodded, “I’ll call your cell if he does.”

  I drove away from the office fluctuating between thoroughly convinced that we were all just a little paranoid, and certain something bad had happened to Mrs. Anderson. It didn’t help my road-rage.

  I honked and cussed and flipped people off and threatened to run over a flock of middle-aged men jogging across the intersection of Moana Lane and Kietzke. Some part of me hoped that I’d get pulled over so I could tell someone official about the situation and they’d take it off my hands. The other part of me wished for the opposite so I could wring Ford’s stupid, zealous neck.

  By some miracle, I made it across town without an official incident on my driving record. When I got to the Shop-N-Save, I started by driving up and down the aisles, looking for the red minivan. Of course, it was a grocery store, in the middle of the day, so there were something like four billion minivans in the lot. I swear, half of them were some shade of red.

  I sat my phone up on the dash so that I could check plates against the plate number Kara had sent me for Beverly’s ride. I got maybe a third of the way through the lot before I saw a fifty-something woman berating a teenage cart pusher. She had plowed into a cart full of groceries, and somehow blamed it on the kid.

  I don’t like people.

  I watched long enough for both of them to notice me. The lady turned her withering stare to me and the kid looked like a man in the ocean, praying for a life preserver. As I started to pull away, something else caught my eye. Not far from the cart-massacre I noticed a busted old pickup truck, a Toyota that I’d seen before. I couldn’t figure out why it was setting off alarm bells in the back of my mind until I saw the license plate.

  PEACE2U

  Ford was here. Or at least had been here, which means that Beverly didn’t imagine him. Damn it.

  I called Kara, who hadn’t heard from Clark. She patched me in and dialed their house, where Clark answered and let us know he still hadn’t heard from his wife.

  I rushed off the phone with some fake assurances and called David. He didn’t answer, so I called again. And again. That time, I left a voicemail telling him that if he didn’t call me back immediately, I was going to get him blacklisted at every strip club in town.

  I needed to get to the church. I hopped out of the Jeep and slashed both of the pickup’s driver-side tires while everyone’s attention was focused on the woman shouting about the dent in her bumper.******

  When Pastor Timothy Ford arrives on the grounds of the Lakeview Church of God, there are a dozen cars parked there. He panics, imagining who might have come to the church looking for him. He wonders about cameras in the grocery store parking lot and slams the truck in reverse, pulling out of the spot marked, “Senior Staff.”

  No one exits the building as he readies to pull back out onto the street, he hopes that it’s a sign that no one heard him arrive. As he waits for traffic to clear enough for him to exit the lot, his skin tingles and he feels a frayed wire, waiting for a stray current.

  There are no police cruisers here. No fire trucks or ambulances. Just an ordinary array of vehicles that might be seen in any parking lot in the city. But why were they in his lot? At his church?!

  Then he remembers the fliers hanging from the bulletin board. The weekly meeting for Alcoholics Anonymous had been changed. He’d forgotten about the addicts, forgotten that he wouldn’t be alone that day.

  Ford backed away from the street once again, and pulled the minivan to a spot at the far end of the parking lot. He’d have to wait. He would just have to watch the whore and make sure she didn’t wake too early.

  He could be patient. This was yet another test he was determined to pass.

  Chapter 15: Leave a Message

  I took the backroads, which I doubt saved me any time, but certainly saved my sanity. I was too spun out trying to keep my head on straight. I reminded myself again and again that I was overreacting, and every time it felt less honest.

  I’ve never been to the Lakeview Church of God, so I had no idea what to expect. There are as many churches in Reno as there are bars, and they range from glorious to sketchy in almost the exact same way. It might be a cathedral, or it might be a double-wide trailer sharing a lot with bait and tackle shop.

  It didn’t matter. I had to get there. I had to find Ford. I hoped I wouldn’t have to find Beverly Anderson. I desperately wanted to get a call from Kara telling me she made it home after a tow truck driver fixed a flat tire. Tell me anything to let me know I hadn’t been taken in by a psychopath.

  “In two miles, your destination will be on your right,” announced the GPS woman through the Jeep’s speakers.

  Only a couple minutes away and still, the phone didn’t ring. I slid the green bar on the touchscreen and hit the redial button. It went straight to David’s voicemail.

  “You’ve reached Lieutenant David Reeves, with the Reno Police Department. Please leave a short message, along with your name and number, and I’ll get back to you. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial nine-one-one.”

  BEEP

  I pounded on the steering wheel and accidentally honked at a pedestrian who flipped me the bird in return. “Answer your fucking phone!” I shouted and chucked the cellphone to the passenger-side floor of the Jeep.******

  Everything is going exactly as planned.

  Beverly Anderson is bound, nude on the hay-covered floor, with white nylon ropes; her hands are tied behind her back and a length of rope runs from her ankles, to her wrists, to the noose around her neck. She remains unconscious—thanks to the second injection he gave her just before the AA meeting adjourned.

  Pastor Timothy Ford strips his own clothes off and hurls them across the basement; they land silently several yards from his baptismal stage. Seventy-seven tea candles line the floor and are scattered through the immediate area. In their flickering light, he watches his reflection flutter in the mirrors.

  He is emaciated and his eyes are sunken and dark. Anemia has set in and his skin is jaundiced and spotted with rust-colored bruises. He ignores the flaccid penis hanging uselessly from a thicket of gray, matted pubic hair below his waist. He bites his lip when he sees that his knees are now thicker than his thighs, and blood trickles both into his mouth and out over his chin.

  Ford is glad that his time is done. He hates too strongly and hurts too much to continue. He’s known for months, deep inside, that his body
is ready to give up on him, whether he finishes his mission or not. But the question of “if” is no longer relevant. He is here and she is here, and his work is nearly through.

  As much as he despises the man he sees in the mirrors, he also knows that he is a warrior. Triumphant. Unrelenting. Worthy.

  Pastor Ford retrieves a hundred-year-old bottle from a shelf near the ladder. The bottle is clear, and the liquid inside is amber in color. The holy Chrism is made of consecrated olive oil and balsam. He pulls the stopper and inhales the sweet, earthy aroma. It evokes memories of his time in seminary, as well as his father’s funeral, where he performed the Rites himself.

  Timothy kneels next to the unconscious woman. She is older than he is, but her full, soft skin, plump breasts, and round face make her look decades younger than the man he sees in the mirror. He runs his finger along the inside lip of the Chrism decanter, and then draws two line in the middle of her forehead—a glistening cross. “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and The Holy Spirit.”

  The pastor traced another cross on the soft skin of her throat, and another below her belly button. He wrenched his hand away, like a child touching a burning stovetop, when his finger brushed against her pubic line, leaving a droplet of oil in the auburn hair.

  He turned his face and mumbled a prayer, fighting against the warm, charged feeling in his loins. He breathed in the scent of the Chrism, the candle-wax, the hay. Soon, the salacious stirring died.

  He dipped his finger into the bottle again, this time making the cross on his own forehead, and again on his chest.******

  Lieutenant David Reeves pulls the phone from his pocket and holds down the power button until the screen comes to life. As soon as the manufacturer’s symbol disappears, the phone lets out eight short bell tones and the same number of notifications light up the screen.

  “Jesus, Gavin,” he mutters and dismisses the notifications. David throws several furtive glances up and down the alley. The smell of decay from the dumpsters mixes terribly with oily stench of the exhaust from the restaurant’s ventilation. He pulls up his contacts list, but before he’s able to find the name he wants, his phone vibrates in his hand.

  “Reeves,” he answers as he exits the alley and begins walking the three blocks back to where he left his car.

  “Oh, hi. Hi, Lieutenant. This is Kara from Gavin’s office.”

  They’ve met only once or twice, but he knows her voice. Any time he calls the office, or if Gavin is doing something for the Department, they exchange pleasantries while she connects them. David thinks she’s too young and bright for his friend, but that might be jealousy.

  “Hello, Kara. I was just about to call him back. Everything all right?”

  “I think so. Gavin is dealing with a bad client situation and he’s been hoping you might give him a call. Sorry for being a pest.”

  He chuckles as he climbs into the unmarked SUV he borrowed from the auto-pool. “Not a problem. I’ll do it now.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant. I know he was hoping you could meet him. He’s at the Lakeview Church of God if you want to head that way.”

  “Give it to me straight, Kara. Is this important, or is Gavin just wasting my time like usual?”

  “I think it’s important. I kind of hope it’s not.”

  He hesitates, not sure what to do with her response. It isn’t worry he feels for his friend, but something close to it. Then, “Oh. Okay. I’ll call him and head in that direction. Any clue what it’s about?”

  “It’s too early to say, but one of his clients might be crazy?” she lets out a frenetic giggle that might be hiding a sob. “I don’t know, I guess crazier than usual.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah. Sure. Not really. The guy who hired us might have kidnapped a woman he’s been stalking.”

  “Why didn’t you call the cops?”

  “Technically, that’s what I’m doing now. Plus, it’s only been a couple of hours.”

  Reeves ends the call with all of the textbook reassurances and pulls out onto the street in the direction he’d come from. He stops just in front the alley. He watches for a long moment; a breeze tumbles a stray grocery bag back and forth between the building and a dumpster, but everything else remains still.

  He clears his throat as the SUV starts moving again and hits the button on the dash-display to dial Gavin’s phone number. The phone rings five times through the speakers before the pre-recorded message begins, “This is Gavin English. I’m sorry I missed your call. If you need to leave a message, please call the office and speak with my assistant. Thanks.”

  BEEP

  Chapter 16: White Walls and Water Works

  The parking lot was all gravel and dirt, but the church had its own sort of beauty. There’s an old white steeple that stabs at the sky, at least a hundred feet tall, and huge stained-glass windows. When I was a kid, this might be the sort of church I always imagined I’d get married, and eventually buried, at.

  In the moment, though, it just gave me the creeps.

  Behind the church, I found the little house where Ford lives. There’s a garden, with nothing growing in it, and a white picket fence lining a small patch of dead grass and weeds. The place didn’t help the eerie sense of dread I’d been carrying since Mr. Anderson called. It felt downright gloomy, and not the sort of place I’d expect to find any sort of salvation.

  There wasn’t a gate, so I followed the thin, concrete path to the door and knocked three times. I didn’t use my cop-knock, because if Ford was in there doing sketchy, terrible things, scaring him wouldn’t help Beverly one bit.

  “Pastor Ford, it’s Gavin English. I need to speak with you.” I said it loud enough to be heard on the other side of the door, but not loud enough to sound manic or desperate. At least, that’s what I was going for. No one answered the door, though, so it’s hard to tell if they bought it. I knocked again, a little harder this time, “Pastor Ford?”

  There’s an old cop trick I learned for dealing with closed doors years back, and I decided it was a good time to use it. I checked the knob, and it wasn’t locked.

  All right, maybe it’s not an old cop trick. But it worked. The door opened smoothly and I found myself staring into an empty room. I suppose you’d call it a living room, except it had nothing living in it. No furniture, no photos on the walls, no rugs. Nothing.

  “Pastor Ford, are you here? It’s Gavin English.”

  No one replied, and I didn’t hear even a hint of movement. So, like any good investigator, I let myself in.

  The place was small, but probably perfect for a single guy with no plans of bringing a lady home. Every surface had been covered in white paint. The walls, the ceiling, and even the hardwood floors were startlingly bright. Something about it made me feel… gross. Like I was the stain on an otherwise perfectly clean sheet.

  I shook off the thought and wandered through the entryway on the left, finding myself in a tiny kitchen. I found a fridge and a stove, both obviously manufactured in the seventies, and a dozen or so cupboards, all of which were painted the same awful, blinding white. The living room had made me uncomfortable. In the kitchen, though, the whitewash felt tense and aggressive.

  I opened the fridge and was not surprised to find it empty, aside from a box of baking soda shoved all the way to the back. The stove was clean and just as uninhabited as the rest of the place. “Hello, is anyone here?”

  “No, stupid,” I replied to myself and immediately wished I hadn’t when a chill ran down my spine.

  I went back into the living room and, from there, followed the only hallway until I found the master bedroom. It was larger than I’d expected, and it wasn’t empty. It had a bed. A bed and four terrible, sparkling ivory-colored walls.

  I peeked into the bathroom, but didn’t go in. The toilet, the sink, the tub, and the walls were all snowy white. And no one was there. No one was anywhere. I was alone in that place and it made my skin crawl and I wanted out. I stood in the be
droom, trying to calm myself a moment too long and shouted, “Tim, you creepy bastard! Where the hell are you?!?” I was frustrated and working quickly to pissed off.

  Which might be a better feeling than worried and impotent, but who can say?

  I stormed out of the room and back down the hallway, through the living room and out the front door. I slammed the door closed and sunlight hit me like a cool breeze; tension I didn’t know I was holding released from my jaw and shoulders. I took several deep breaths and realized that the stress, mixed with the uncomfortably colorless house had set my nerves on edge.

  No wonder Ford lost his damn mind.

  I stared at the back of the old church from the rectory’s front door. The roof was missing shingles and ivy had taken over most of the Northwest corner of the building. My gaze wandered over the peeling paint, and a small cracked window that I guessed belonged to a restroom. Then I saw it.

  A red minivan, stashed way off in the back corner of the parking lot. Far enough from the church I hadn’t noticed it when I pulled up, and the tree-line blocked it from the view of passing traffic. My pulse quickened and my throat went dry.

  It had to be Beverly. Why would her van be there if his truck was still at the store? No good reason sprang to mind. More than one bad reason did.

  I ran. Around the corner to the side of the building. Past a rusted playground set, fenced off with chicken-wire. My heart thrummed and the little hairs on the back of my neck stood out like tiny lightning rods as I turned another corner and bolted up the steps.

  I hammered the door with my open palm, “Ford!” Not waiting for a response, I stepped back and kicked at it, hard and right next to the curved, brass handle. The door didn’t budge; it was huge and made of thick wood and wrought iron. “Ford! OPEN THE GODDAMN DOOR!” I kicked it again and was rewarded with the exact same response.