Preacher Sam

by Cassondra Windwalker

  Sam noticed Clay didn’t even notice he’d dismissed the idea of adults having best friends when his own wife had supposedly been killed by hers. Maybe he was more disconnected from other people than Sam had realized.

  “All people?”

  “Hmm?” Clay leaned forward on his knees and peered at Sam over his soda can. Sam wondered how much he’d had to drink. He couldn’t have been home from the office long, but Sam wasn’t sure he’d have held off till then. He hoped the other man wasn’t going to throw up. Sam was a sympathetic puker, himself. “Whaddya mean?”

  Sam pulled Amanda’s letter out of the Bible he’d carried in with him. “Do you know what this is?”

  Clay seemed to realize the conversation was about to take a serious turn. He straightened up, set his can down. “No.”

  “It’s a letter that Amanda wrote to Amy’s parents the day she was arrested.”

  Clay’s ruddy cheeks paled. His eyes fixed on the pages as Sam withdrew them from the envelope, held them up so Clay could see Amanda’s neat, cramped cursive.

  “What did she say?”

  “I think you know what she said.”

  Clay stood up abruptly, moving restlessly around the couch and scrubbing at his face. Sam stayed still, although his muscles tensed up, ready for an altercation. If he was right and Clay had killed Amy, then there was nothing to say he wouldn’t try to kill Sam, too.

  “She could have said anything!”

  “Make this easy on yourself, Clay. Easy on Paige and Harper.” Sam hoped using the girls’ names would summon some sense of decency in their father, even if he’d completely dishonored the title.

  Clay spun around, his glassy eyes taking on a canny glint. “Why are you the one here talking to me and not that Chink cop?”

  Apparently the distinction between Chinese and Vietnamese was lost on Clay, never mind that the detective was clearly an American born and bred. But that wasn’t an uncommon perspective in Indiana. Most of the population had been born in the state, and they lived and died swimming in their own homogenous soup. Not to mention that the KKK, long associated with the South, had actually gotten its start here. Sam chided himself silently for his cynicism. A few bad eggs didn’t mean you had to sell the farm. But they sure did make the cookie batter taste bad.

  “He hasn’t read the letter. Yet.”

  “Oh? Why not?”

  “I asked the Jensens to let me come talk to you first. This isn’t going to go away. Not now. It’s too late for that. But you still have control over how it’s handled. You still get to decide for yourself what you’re going to do. Who you’re going to be.” Sam forced himself to speak gently.

  Clay grabbed the soda can off the table and pounded it back, strode across the room, and slammed his fist through the drywall repeatedly. A framed family photograph fell from the wall, glass shattering. Sam didn’t move, didn’t speak. The violence in the room was a wild beast all its own.

  Clay was breathing heavily, his fist still embedded in the wall. “This doesn’t feel like control.”

  “It’s better than having the cops show up here and tell you what’s going to happen.”

  “But you didn’t come here to tell me I can just leave town. Flee the country. Start over somewhere else. You’re here to convince me to do the right thing.” Sarcasm weighted his words.

  “Clay, look around you.” Sam spoke slowly, trying to measure his words. Always full of grace, seasoned with salt, he thought desperately. If he believed in the power of the Word, then he had to believe in the power of words, too. Words could break hearts and bind them up, condemn a man or save him. Somehow, he had to find the words that could bring peace to this circumstance that seemed so hopelessly shattered into ugliness and pain.

  “Look at where the path you’re on has brought you. You’re alone. Your wife, your daughters, are gone. There’s no one you can talk to. No one who knows the truth. No one who can understand.”

  Clay pulled his hand out of the wall, sending white drywall dust cascading onto the carpet. He turned and slid down the wall onto the floor, staring across his dirty, trash-strewn house with glazed eyes.

  “And you’ll understand, if I talk to you?” Clay laughed bitterly. “I’m not a fool. I know exactly what people like you think of men like me. But you don’t understand. I love Paige. I love Harper. More than anything else in the world.”

  “You’re their father.” Sam fought to deliver the words without judgment, without emphasis. Now that the moment had come, he wanted nothing more than to get up and walk out of this house without ever having to hear what Clay was going to say. Some things were too ugly and awful to hear.

  But Sam stayed right where he was. For Paige. For Harper. He wasn’t here to make himself feel better. He was here to try and keep the girls from feeling worse.

  “I am. That’s right. Nobody will ever love them like I do.”

  “No, that’s true. And that’s why you have to help them now.”

  “Isn’t it enough that I gave them up?”

  “You haven’t really given them up as long as they are keeping your secrets for you.”

  “But that was our deal.”

  “Yours and Amanda’s.”

  “Amanda Garcia. She’s the deal-maker, all right. First Amy, and now me. Fat little toad.”

  “I don’t know about her deal with Amy.” Sam didn’t know about her deal with Clay, either, but he wasn’t about to admit that.

  “No? There’s things you don’t know? All-wise Preacher Sam doesn’t have all the answers?” Clay cackled, staring at his empty hand as if he expected to find more liquor there.

  “Well, then, I guess you’ll be surprised to learn that I didn’t murder Amy at all. I killed her in self-defense. Pure and simple.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sam took a deep breath, reminding himself to tread carefully when it came to asking questions. He couldn’t afford for Clay to guess at the breadth of his ignorance, even if he doubted the dexterity of the man’s thinking processes just now.

  “The police will have to take that into account.”

  “But that’s not the point, is it?” Sneering lost some of its impact when coupled with slurring.

  “I suppose not.”

  “So Amanda didn’t tell you everything, huh?” Clay seemed to have forgotten that Amanda hadn’t told Sam anything, that his only source of information was supposed to be the letter she’d written to Amy’s parents. Sam was happy to gloss over that fine point.

  “This isn’t just Amanda’s story, Clay. It isn’t just Amy’s story. It’s your story, too.”

  The only story that concerned Sam was Paige and Harper’s, but he wasn’t about to say that. He hadn’t even spoken to the children, had only seen them at the funeral. How unfair was that? Children were so much at the mercy of adults and often remained voiceless in even the most well-meaning of circumstances. Sam could only hope that eventually, with lots of help, the girls would retake the telling of their own narrative.

  “Right? That’s true, isn’t it? I panicked, you know? Have you ever stared down the barrel of a gun?”

  Sam shook his head.

  “Me either. Not till that night. What a set-up. Amy called, asked me to have a neighbor watch the girls while I came to the shop. Said she thought there’d been a break-in.”

  Sam sat up straighter. “A neighbor?” That meant someone should have told the police that Clay had been at the shop, too.

  Clay made a noise that might have been a laugh. “Yeah, well, that was one thing I did right. The girls were sleeping. Why wake the neighbors? I locked the door. They were perfectly safe.”

  “Ah.”

  “Right? She couldn’t control everything. Anyway, one minute I’m walking in the back door, the next minute my wife is standing there pointing a gun at me.”

  Clay sighed heavily, drew a hand across his eyelids. “Tunnel vision. It was like all I could see was that gun. I grabbed it, spun it around, shot her right in the
chest. It happened so fast. I don’t think she even knew it happened.

  “The gunshot was so loud—I think I dropped the thing as soon as it fired. I’d only shot it a few times, at a range, with ear protection on and all that. And Amanda was screaming. Everything was just so loud.”

  Clay’s voice dropped. “By the time I realized what had happened, Amanda had Amy’s head on her lap and the gun in her hand.”

  Sam ventured a question then. “Why didn’t you take the gun away and kill her, too?”

  Clay fixed his bleary eyes on Sam’s face. “Don’t you get it? I’m not a killer. I just reacted. I was terrified. Why would my own wife want to kill me? What had I done? I didn’t want to kill Amanda. I just wanted answers.”

  “What answers did she give you?”

  “That the whole thing had been a set-up, of course. Harper had told Amy about us.” Sam’s skin crawled at Clay’s use of the word “us,” as if the eight-year-old girl had somehow been party to her father’s abuse. “Amy and Amanda meant to ambush me, claim self-defense later with Amanda as a witness. But I guess Amy froze when the time came. Hesitated. Maybe she could never have gone through with it at all. I can still see her eyes. They were huge. So bright.

  “But I’d ruined everything. Amanda might still have been able to kill me and get away with it, but it would have been a lot harder for her with no one to corroborate her story. And I think we were both in shock. She just kept saying Amy’s name over and over. I don’t know if she even realized she’d picked up the gun.”

  “Why didn’t Amy and Amanda go to the police with what they knew? Why concoct such a violent and elaborate scheme?”

  Clay cocked his head. “Oh, I thought you got that part. Their whole point was to keep the police out of it. It would have been Harper’s word against mine, you know? And Harper loves me. They had no case. I never hurt my baby. Never. I loved her. The only things we did were to make her feel good. They wouldn’t have found a mark on her.”

  Sam spoke slowly, clinging to the edges of his control. “Amy didn’t want the girls to have to testify. And, if she’d lost the case, you’d still be able to share custody.”

  Clay touched his finger to his nose and pointed it at Sam. “There you go. Clever man.”

  “So Amanda took the blame instead.”

  “In exchange for me sending the girls to their grandparents. I couldn’t even call them. Or write. Adam and Lenore have always been tight with Amanda. If she asked, they’d tell her anything. So I haven’t even touched them since I tucked them into bed that night.” Clay drew a ragged breath. Sam hoped to God the man wasn’t going to start crying. He didn’t know how much longer he could maintain this sympathetic facade as it was.

  “I still don’t understand,” Sam confessed. “They still had no more evidence against you than what Harper had told them. Why didn’t you just call the police, explain the self-defense? Amanda’s accusations might not have sounded like anything more than the lies of a friend or even a lover. Definitely a co-conspirator. And all the physical evidence would have been in your favor.”

  Clay held his head in his hands. “That reputation thing, Preacher Sam. I’d just lost everything I loved. I didn’t want to lose my job, my name. I didn’t want people looking at me like I’m some kind of monster.”

  “And now?”

  “Now what choice do I have? Amanda lied to me. She betrayed me.” Sam fought to keep anger out of his face at Clay’s self-pitying words. “Now, I have to go to the police. Tell them my side. They have to understand it was self-defense, right? I had no choice.”

  “What about the girls?”

  “What about them?”

  “Their mother is dead. Amanda is in jail because she wanted to spare them from having to go through a trial. Those little girls need to be able to talk to someone. They’ve been through too much.”

  Clay raised his head. “You mean a psychologist? Some quack who will brainwash them into believing there was something sick about what we shared? Someone who will make them hate me?”

  “You’re their father, Clay. No one can ever make them hate you.” Except you, Sam thought silently, hoping it was true. “But you’re the only person who can spare them all the drawn-out pain they will suffer if Amanda makes her case and this becomes public fodder. This would be one last gift you have to give them.

  “One last burden you have to bear alone. This secret is eating you alive, Clay. Just let it go. Tell the cops everything. They’ll go easy on you; you’re the victim here. You can’t carry this around forever. And neither can your girls.”

  Just speaking about them in Clay’s presence left a bad taste in Sam’s mouth.

  A long moment passed. Finally Sam forced himself to unfold out of the chair, to cross the room, to crouch down beside Clay and place a hand on his shoulder.

  “Come on. I’ll drive you to the station.”

  A shuddering sigh. And then,

  “Okay.”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  While Clay washed up and changed clothes, Sam laboriously texted the number Detective Nguyen had given him, the number shuffle making his brain cramp.

  I’m bringing Clay Randolph to the station to confess to his wife’s murder. And other things. Can you meet us there?

  Sam was relieved when Nguyen’s response came back in just a few seconds later. He had no idea what the man’s schedule was like or what other cases he might be working. Sam had the feeling Clay was barely clinging to his intentions, and he didn’t want any obstacles that could derail that, not even a moment’s delay at the station. In fact, he was more than a little worried that just the act of walking into an interrogation room might sober Clay into clamming up.

  Oh, well. All he could do was all he could do.

  Heading there now.

  When Clay shuffled back into the living room, his face was still slightly damp, and his tie was restored to its usual place. If it weren’t for his bloodshot, despair-deadened eyes, he might almost look normal.

  “Come on,” said Sam, with a monumental effort at whatever was a normal tone of voice in this circumstance. “I’ll drive you.”

  Clay nodded silently. Even when they got into the car, he seemed uninclined to speak, lost in his thoughts. Sam didn’t know if that was good or bad. After several minutes of silence that beat against his eardrums, he cautiously turned on the radio, set the volume to low. Gary Allan’s voice drifted out of the speakers.

  “Music okay?” He glanced at the other man.

  Clay just nodded, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond the passenger window. Sam made no further effort at conversation.

  At the station, Sam was the one who went to the bulletproof glass window and let the clerk know they needed to speak with Detective Nguyen. Clay sat slumped in one of the stained plastic chairs bolted to the floor. He still hadn’t spoken. Sam had the oddest sensation of being in a paternal role, with Clay his recalcitrant charge being brought to face the consequences of his actions. He wondered how Clay’s actual father would react when the truth came to light. Sam didn’t know anything about Clay’s parents—maybe they weren’t even alive. Maybe they were the root cause of all this tragedy. Weren’t most abusers victims themselves at one point?

  Sam dismissed the thought. He’d gotten the man here. Fostering sympathy for him was a different matter entirely, one he had no intention of pursuing.

  Besides, what a child suffered and a man chose were morally distinct.

  At least, Sam thought so. If not, there wasn’t much point in morality at all. If faith couldn’t empower people to overcome the destiny that brutish life offered, then faith was meaningless. The one thing Christ’s sacrifice meant, incontrovertibly, if it meant anything at all, was that no-one lived condemned. The flames were no longer a foregone conclusion, in this life or the next.

  Adam Nguyen emerged from a door in less than a minute. His eyes met Sam’s for just an instant, and that brief flash of comprehension made comrades of them. Sam realized Nguyen
must have had his doubts about Clay from the beginning. He supposed someone of Nguyen’s experience probably recognized something in Clay that had been invisible to the rest of them, something that had made him uneasy about the story of Amy’s death from the start. And now, without need of words, he’d seen that same knowledge reflected in Sam’s own eyes and commiserated with him in the silent way that only a person who has had to comfort a monster they’d sooner have extinguished can commiserate with another.

  “Clay.” Nguyen extended his hand. “Why don’t we talk back here?”

  Sam noticed Clay used the hand as an assist out of the chair rather than as a greeting. The man just nodded his acquiescence. He still hadn’t spoken since he’d gone into the bathroom to clean up, back at his own house.

  “Would you like the preacher here to come along?”

  Sam had the feeling the offer was an unusual one, and he was vastly relieved when Clay shook his head and said, in a scratchy voice, “No, I don’t want anyone else to hear what I have to say.”

  Nguyen nodded, his eyes flicking back to Sam as he opened the door and ushered Clay through it.

  “I’ll wait here,” Sam said. He doubted Clay would be coming back through that door, but he was the man’s ride, after all. And he wanted confirmation from Nguyen that the worst was true, as well as some idea of what to tell Raul to expect from here.

  The wait took longer than he had expected. He wandered around the blank expanse of the police lobby, staring unseeing at wanted posters and public notices and out the window onto the street. Idly he wondered if this glass were reinforced, too. He watched other people come and go, their attention fixed on their phones. He decided to go out to his car and get his Bible. He needed something to read.

  He took a corner seat, leaning his shoulders against the wall and stretching out his long legs. Daniel, he decided, would do for a short read. Daniel had always fascinated him: the passionate, devoted youth, the stalwart advisor to conquering tyrants, the prophet of a Messiah he’d never see. Sam figured most people would expect his namesake to be his hero, but Samuel had been a disappointment to Sam in the end. As he supposed he had been himself, to many people. But, he reminded himself, unlike Samuel, his story was not yet told. Every new chapter propelled him further from the fall that might yet define his redemption.