by Alex Kava
Kathleen watched, uncomfortable yet unflinching. Perhaps this was one of Father’s prophetic fits. He had told them about his visions, his tremors, his talks with God, but no one had witnessed one. Is that what was happening now? Is that what caused the veins at his temples to bulge and his teeth to clench? Is this what it looked like to talk to God? How would she know? She had stopped talking to God ages ago. Right about the time she started believing in the power of Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam.
However, Father did seem to have special powers, certain knowledge, almost psychic abilities. How else was he able to so keenly zero in on people’s fears? How else was he able to know so much about things the media and the government kept from everyone?
She had been shocked at first when he told them about the government putting chemicals like fluoride in the water to cause cancer or about the government injecting healthy cows with E. coli to cause a national panic. About the government putting listening devices in cellular phones and cameras in ATM machines, all to record their every move. Even the magnetic strips on the back of credit cards contained personal tracking devices. And now with the Internet, the government could see inside people’s homes anytime they went online.
At first she had found it all hard to believe, but each time, Father read to them articles from sources he said were unbiased, some in prestigious medical journals, and all backing up his knowledge.
He was one of the wisest men Kathleen had ever known. She still wasn’t sure she cared whether or not her soul had been saved. What Kathleen O’Dell did care about was that, for the first time in more than two decades, she believed in someone again and that she was surrounded by people who cared about her. She was an integral part of a community, an integral part of something larger and more important than herself. That was something she had never experienced.
“Kathleen?”
“Yes, Father?”
He was pouring more tea for them and frowned when he noticed she had hardly touched hers. But instead of lecturing her on the healing qualities of his special tea, he said, “What can you tell me about breakfast with your daughter?”
“Oh, that. It was nice,” she lied, not wanting to confess that they hadn’t even ordered breakfast before Maggie bailed out on her. “I told Maggie that perhaps we could do Thanksgiving.”
“And? I hope she won’t make an excuse that she has to be off profiling some important case, will she?” He seemed so concerned that her relationship with her daughter work out. With all these other problems to deal with, Kathleen felt guilty that she had given him one more concern.
“Oh, no, I don’t think so. She seemed very excited about it,” she lied again, wanting to please him. After all, he often said the end justified the means. He had so many pressures of his own. She couldn’t add to that. Besides, it would all work out just fine with her and Maggie. It always did.
“I’m excited about cooking a real holiday meal. Thanks so much for suggesting it.”
“It’s important for the two of you to repair your relationship,” he told her.
He had been encouraging her to do so for months now. She was a bit confused by it. Usually, Father emphasized that members needed to let go of family. Even tonight with Martin and Aaron, he had lectured that there were no fathers and sons, no mothers and daughters. But she was sure Father had a good reason—if he was insisting it must be for her own good. He probably knew that she needed to repair the relationship before they left for Colorado. Yes, that was it. So that she could truly feel free.
Just then, she wondered how Father knew that Maggie was a profiler for the FBI. She was quite certain she hadn’t told him. Half the time, she couldn’t even remember what it was called. But, of course, Father would have taken it upon himself to know. She smiled to herself, pleased that he obviously cared a great deal about her to bother with such a small detail. Now she really would need to make an effort to have Thanksgiving with Maggie. It was the least she could do if it meant that much to Reverend Everett.
CHAPTER 30
Newburgh Heights, Virginia
Maggie leaned her forehead against the cool glass and watched the raindrops slide down her kitchen window. Wisps of fog descended upon her large, secluded backyard, reminding her for a second time in two days of swirling ghosts. It was ridiculous. She didn’t believe in ghosts. She believed in things she knew, black-and-white things she could see and feel. Gray was much too complicated.
Yet each time she viewed a dead body, each time she helped slice into its flesh and remove what were once pulsating organs, she found herself reaffirming—or perhaps it was hoping—that there had been something eternal, something no one could see or even begin to understand, something that had escaped from the decaying shell left behind. If that’s the way it worked, then Ginny Brier’s spirit, her soul, was in another place, perhaps with Delaney and Maggie’s father, all of them sharing the horrific last moments as they swirled in wisps of gray fog around the dogwoods in her backyard.
Jesus! She grabbed the tumbler of Scotch off the kitchen counter and drained what was left, trying to remember how many she had drunk since getting home from the morgue. Then she decided if she couldn’t remember, it didn’t matter. Besides, the familiar buzz was preferable to that annoying hollow feeling she couldn’t shake off.
She poured another Scotch, this time noticing the wall calendar that hung alongside the small corkboard above the counter. The board was empty except for a few pushpins with nothing to hold up. Was there not one goddamn thing she needed to remind herself about? The wall calendar was still turned to September. She flipped the pages, bringing it to November. Thanksgiving was only days away. Had her mother been serious about cooking a dinner? Maggie couldn’t remember the last time they had attempted a holiday together, though whenever it was, she was sure it had been disastrous. There were plenty of holidays in her memory bank she would just as soon forget. Like four years ago when she spent Christmas Eve on a hard, lumpy sofa outside the critical care unit of St. Anne’s Hospital. While others had been buying last-minute gifts or stopping at parties for sugar cookies and eggnog, her mother had spent the day mixing red and green pills with her old friend, Jim Beam.
She stood at the window again, watching the fog swallow entire corners of her landscape. She could barely see the outline of the pine trees that lined her property. They reminded her of towering sentries, standing shoulder to shoulder, shielding her, protecting her. After a childhood of feeling lost and vulnerable, why wouldn’t she spend her adulthood looking for ways to be in control, to protect herself? Sure, in some ways, it had also made her cautious, a bit skeptical and untrusting. Or as Gwen would put it, it made her inaccessible to anyone including those who cared about her. Which made her think of Nick Morrelli.
She leaned her forehead against the glass again. She didn’t want to think of Nick. Her mother’s accusation that morning still stung, probably because there was more truth in it than she wanted to admit. She hadn’t talked to Nick in weeks, and it had been months since they had seen each other. Months since she had told him she didn’t want to see him until after her divorce was final.
She checked her watch, took another sip of Scotch and found herself reaching for the phone. She could stop at any second, she could hang up before he answered. Or maybe just say hi. What harm was there in hearing his voice?
One ring, two, three…She would leave a brief and friendly message on his answering machine. Four rings…five—
“Hello?” It was a woman’s voice.
“Yes,” Maggie said, not recognizing the voice. Maybe she had the wrong number. It had been months, after all, since she had dialed it. “Is Nick Morrelli there?”
“Oh,” the woman said, “is this the office? Can’t it wait?”
“No, this is a friend. Is Nick there?”
The woman paused as if she needed to decide what information a friend was entitled to. Then finally she said, “Umm…he’s in the shower. Can I take a message and have him call you back?
”
“No, that’s okay. I’ll try back another time.”
But when Maggie hung up the phone, she knew she would not try back anytime soon.
CHAPTER 31
Reston, Virginia
Tully hoped his gut instinct was wrong. He hoped he was being an overprotective father who was simply overreacting. That’s what he kept telling himself, yet before he left the morgue he made a copy of Virginia Brier’s driver’s license photo and stuck it in his back pocket.
He had called Emma earlier to let her know he wouldn’t be home until later, but if she wanted to wait for dinner, he’d pick up a pizza. He was pleased when she asked for lots of pepperoni on her side. At least they would be sharing a meal together, perhaps one they could both enjoy. Between the two of them, their culinary skills didn’t extend much beyond grilled cheese sandwiches with soup. Sometimes when Tully was feeling a bit adventurous he’d throw a couple of chunks of meat on the grill. Unfortunately, he had never been able to figure out how to keep it from becoming a shrunken, charred hockey puck, and there wasn’t much treat in that.
Their small two-bedroom bungalow in Reston, Virginia, was a far cry from the two-story colonial they’d lived in in Cleveland. Caroline had insisted on keeping the house, and now Tully wondered if Emma would ever want to come back here after spending Thanksgiving vacation in her old room. Only recently had this house begun to feel like home, though it had been almost a year since they’d made the move. No matter how much he complained about this parenting stuff, he couldn’t imagine what this house, the move, the new town and new job—what any of it would have been like without Emma.
Thanks to his daughter, the house didn’t have that bachelor look or smell to it, though, as Tully weaved his way through the living room clutter to the kitchen clutter, he wondered if there was a difference between bachelor clutter and teenager clutter. Maybe what he liked was having some feminine things around, even if the pink lava lamp on the bookcase, the purple Rollerblades sticking out from under the sofa or the smiley-face magnets on the refrigerator were not his style.
“Hey, Dad.” As he stepped through the front door Emma appeared. He didn’t kid himself. It was the power of pizza that drew her, not his lovable presence.
“Hi, sweat pea.” He kissed her cheek, a gesture she tolerated only when they were alone.
She wore her headphones wrapped around her neck, a compromise that had taken much drilling and constant reminders, but was well worth it, although he could still hear the music blaring. The music, however, he couldn’t complain about, since he still enjoyed some head-banging rock ’n’ roll once in a while, only in the form of the Rolling Stones or the Doors.
Emma got out the paper plates and plastic cups that they had agreed long ago would be part of any take-out treat. What was the use of having someone else prepare the meal if you still had to wash dishes? As he scooped up pieces of pizza and watched her pour their Pepsis, he wondered when would be a good time to broach the subject about the dead girl.
“Kitchen or living room?” she asked, picking up her plate and cup.
“Living room, but no TV.”
“Okay.”
He followed her into the living room, and when she decided to sit on the floor, he joined her despite his thigh still being a bit tender. It reminded him that Agent O’Dell never once mentioned or complained about her scar, a memento from the legendary serial killer Albert Stucky. Although he had never seen it, Tully knew from rumors that the scar crossed the length of her abdomen, as if the man had tried to gut her. Now he and O’Dell had something in common. Tully had a scar of his own, a constant reminder of the bullet Albert Stucky had put into him last spring as he and O’Dell tried to recapture him.
The bullet had caused some damage, but he refused to let it stop him from his daily ritual run. Lately he hated to admit that it qualified more as jogging than running. That one bullet had messed up a lot of things, including his ability to sit cross-legged on the floor without feeling the muscles sting and pinch. There were some things worth a little pain, and having pizza on the floor with his daughter was one of them.
“Mom called,” Emma said as if it were an everyday occurrence. “She said she talked to you about Thanksgiving and that you were cool with everything.”
He clenched his jaw. He wasn’t cool with everything, but then Emma didn’t need to know that. He watched her swipe a strand of long blond hair from her face to keep it away from the strings of cheese that hung from the pizza slice.
“Are you cool about spending Thanksgiving in Cleveland?” he asked.
“I guess.”
It seemed like a typical Emma response, a hint of indifference mixed with that you’d-never-understand-anyway shrug of the shoulders. He wished someone had told him long ago that he’d need a degree in psychology to be a parent of a teenager. Maybe that’s why he enjoyed his job. Figuring out serial killers seemed like a piece of cake compared to figuring out teenage girls.
“If you don’t want to go, you don’t have to.” He gulped his Pepsi, trying to replicate the art of indifference that his daughter seemed to have perfected.
“She’s got it all planned and stuff.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I just hope she didn’t invite him over.”
Tully wasn’t sure who the new “him” was in his ex-wife’s life. Maybe he didn’t want to know. There had been several since their divorce.
“You have to understand, Emma, if your mom has someone new in her life, she’s probably gonna want to include him for Thanksgiving.”
Jeez! He couldn’t believe he was defending Caroline’s right to screw yet another guy. Just the thought made him angry, or worse, lose his appetite. Two years ago his wife decided one day that she was no longer in love with him, that the passion in their marriage was gone and that she needed to move on. Nothing better to destroy a guy’s ego than to have his wife tell him she needed to move on and away from his passionless, unlovable self.
“What about you?”
For a minute Tully had forgotten what exactly they had been talking about.
“What do you mean?”
“What will you do for Thanksgiving?”
He caught himself staring at her, then grabbed for another piece of pizza, feeling his indifference slipping. Yet he couldn’t help but smile. His daughter was worried about him spending Thanksgiving alone. Could there be anything more cool?
“Hey, I’m planning on a full day of fun, sitting in my underwear watching football all afternoon.”
She frowned at him. “You hate college football.”
“Well, then maybe I’ll go to the movies.”
This made her giggle, and she had to set her Pepsi aside so as not to spill it.
“What’s so funny about that?”
“You, go to the movies by yourself? Come on, Dad. Get real.”
“Actually, I’ll probably need to work. There’s a pretty important case we’re working on. In fact, I wanted to talk to you about it.”
He pulled the photocopy from his back pocket, unfolded it and handed it to Emma.
“Do you know this girl? Her name’s Virginia Brier.”
Emma took a careful look, then set the copy aside and began on another piece of pizza.
“Is she in some kind of trouble?”
“No, she’s not in trouble.” Tully felt a wave of relief. It looked like Emma didn’t recognize the girl. Of course he had been crazy. There had been hundreds of people at the monuments Saturday night.
But before he could relax, Emma said, “She doesn’t like to be called Virginia.”
“What?”
“She uses Ginny.”
Jesus! The nausea grabbed hold again.
“So you do know her?”
“Actually, Alesha and I just met her Saturday when we were on the field trip, but yeah, she was there Saturday night, too. She sorta made us mad, because she was flirting with this boy Alesha really liked. He was really cool and he seemed
to be having a good time with us until that reverend guy fawned all over Ginny.”
“Hold on a minute. Who was this boy?”
“His name’s Brandon. He was with Alice and Justin and the reverend guy.”
Tully got up and went to where he’d left his windbreaker. He started pulling everything out of his pockets and finally found the pamphlet he had picked up blowing around the FDR Memorial. He handed it to Emma.
“Is this the reverend guy?” He pointed to the color photograph on the back.
“Yeah, that’s him. Reverend Everett,” she read off the pamphlet. “Except they were all calling him Father. Seemed kinda creepy. I mean it’s not like he’s their dad or anything.”
“It’s not that weird, Emma. Catholics call priests Father. It’s sort of a title, like pastor or reverend or Mr.”
“Yeah, but it wasn’t like they were using it as a title. They really were all talking about him as if he were their father, ’cause he’s their leader and like he knows what’s best for them and stuff.”
“This Brandon guy, did you see him go off with Ginny?”
“You mean like to be alone?”
“Yes.”
“Dad, there were like tons of people. Besides, Alesha and I left before the rally thing was over. It was so lame, all that singing and clapping.”
“You think you might be able to give a detailed description of Brandon?”
She looked at him as if realizing for the first time there might be some connection to the questions about Ginny and his job as an FBI agent.
“Yeah, I guess I could,” she said, her indifference changing to concern. “I thought you said Ginny wasn’t in trouble.”
He hesitated, wondering what to tell her. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and chances were she’d hear about it soon on TV. No matter how much of a protective father he wanted to be, he couldn’t protect her from the truth. And she’d be upset with him if he lied.
