Jericho's Razor

by Casey Doran

  “This, Jericho, is your birthright. This is the time for me to bring you into the inner circle of our flock. This is where you learn who you are.”

  The woman thrashed on the offering table. I was still not sure why I had not yet cut her loose. But she had not yet given up hope that I would.

  “You’re a fucking lunatic.”

  “Pull yourself together.” Peter approached the woman. An accusatory finger called attention to the photos.

  “This woman, look at her! Look at who she is! She is a whore. A heathen who sells her body to weak fools. Prostituting herself. Defiling her body. The body is God’s temple, Jericho. Look how she desecrates that temple. Carrying diseases. Taking drugs she uses sex to acquire. She is a plague. A blight on an enlightened and God-fearing society.”

  Peter reached in a pocket in his robe and drew a knife, although “knife” did not do the weapon justice. The blade was maybe a foot in length and ended in a bone handle.

  “She must be eradicated.”

  “Eradicated? What the hell?”

  “No, Jericho. To Hell. This is our mission.”

  “Mission? What the … how have you kept this from Mom?”

  “Kept it from her?” Peter wore the smile of a devil who was finally able to show his true face. “The union between man and wife is blessed, Jericho. Your mother and I share all things. We are one in our service to the Lord. One in our mission.”

  “You mean … Mom kills people too?”

  “She has stricken down many sinners who would spread their poison on our way of life. On God’s plan.”

  “God’s plan? I don’t think it’s God’s plan for me to kill this lady.”

  The finger swung my way. “Do not second guess the Almighty, Jericho.”

  I pointed to the pictures. “She has a daughter! She has a little girl! Are you going to kill her too?”

  “The child may have the chance for a rewarding life away from this vile witch. Do you know she makes the little girl sit in the car while she dances and services these men? While she does drugs?” Peter pulled a photo off the wall and held it before me. It showed the little girl sitting in the backseat of a beat-up sedan. Her small hands clutched a ragged bear.

  “Is that a mother? Is that a person who should have the honor of raising a child?”

  Peter came to me. The knife was held out before him with the handle being offered to me.

  “Take it, my son. Take this, which is your birthright, which I now give to you. You are the eldest, whom I have named Jericho, and upon you a holy nation will be built.”

  The knife was pressed into my hand, and Peter backed away. The woman thrashed and pleaded, scared and cold and knowing she was about to die. My father waited, looking at me with more pride than I had ever seen from him. In his mind, it was a foregone conclusion that I would do as he asked. I would kill this woman who I had never met and spill her blood in this unholy sanctuary.

  I tossed the dagger at Peter’s feet. The steel clattered on the cold, hard floor.

  “You’re a fucking lunatic. And you can go to hell.”

  Again, the cold gaze found me. The eyes that as a child I was too scared to look into. The eyes that were so similar to my own, and yet so different.

  “I urge you to reconsider.”

  “Reconsider? I don’t need to reconsider! I always knew you were ... different. I mean, the bible thumping and the herd of brainwashed disciples you always have following you. But you are absolutely fucking insane!”

  Peter picked up the knife. The steel sang off the cold floor. He turned away from the woman on the table as though forgetting she were there, all of his attention centered on me.

  “And I always knew that you were corrupted. Corrupted by society and it’s degradation of God’s will. I had hoped that once you were shown the way, you would accept your destiny. But you have chosen to the path of evil. And for that, you will be punished.”

  “What?” I asked. “Are you going to kill me now?”

  His eyes answered for me. Faster than I had ever seen him move, faster than I thought he could move, Peter was upon me. The knife dug into my chest, tearing muscle, spilling blood. I screamed and fell to the floor. Peter, my father, stood over me, his hands and robe covered in my blood. He looked down on me in shame.

  “My son. How you have forsaken me.”

  I had turned at the last possible second. The blade had caught me in the side, missing the major arteries. But blood was pooling in my fingers against my soaked shirt. My fingers probed the gash and found bone. The knife had gone all the way through, leaving jagged tears in the front and back of my shirt. I dug my fingers into my side, stemming the flow of blood, focusing on the pain to keep myself from passing out.

  Peter moved toward the table. Sheila’s screams rose higher through her gag. They reached a crescendo as he plunged the dagger into her chest. Through blurry eyes I saw him stab her over and over and over, blood spraying his gown and spotting it like crimson rain. I listened to the screaming turn into sobs. And then nothing. Peter came back over to me, as though suddenly remembering that I was even there.

  “Do you see now, Jericho?” he said. “God’s work cannot be derailed.”

  Peter stood over me with his head raised to the heavens. His blood-soaked arms were stretched out in a pose of attrition.

  “I have shown him the way, Lord! The way to peace, to holiness, to everlasting life! And he has chosen the way of evil. Bless me, Lord. Bless my hand as I send him to you, for your judgment!”

  As before, his eyes were closed as he finished the rest of his prayer in silence. I knew I had only moments to act, to find a way to leave the basement alive. The bulge at my hip reminded me of what was tucked in my coat. My hand groped for the handle, gripping the steel in blood-covered fingers. Without thinking, without aiming, I raised the .45 and fired. The repercussion was deafening. With my ears ringing, I pulled the trigger again and again and again, until all I heard was the hammer falling on empty cylinders.

  Chapter Eleven

  After killing Peter, I managed to climb back to his office. Upon reaching the landing, I looked down and saw the bloody trail I left while climbing the steps. It was the mark of a mortally wounded animal crawling someplace comfortable to die. I remembered thinking that even if I somehow made it to the house, my mother would likely finish the job Peter started.

  I was saved by a man I knew as David. I often saw him working around the compound, making whatever effort he could to earn Peter’s good graces and become part of the chosen few. It turned out that David was FBI. He spent three months in deep cover trying to get close to Peter and his inner circle. Drawn to the chapel by the sound of gunfire, he found me clinging to life and called in every law enforcement officer within a hundred miles.

  Eli got caught in the crossfire. Unaware of our father’s secrets and what had occurred in the chapel, he saw a swarm of men dressed in body armor and wielding assault weapons overtake our home after a sniper shot our mother through the kitchen window. Along with Peter’s followers, Eli defended his home, wounding six of the officers, permanently paralyzing one of them.

  By the time the cacophony of gunshots stopped filling the air, seventeen men, four women, and three children were dead. Over a dozen more were seriously wounded. The surviving members of Peter’s cult were sent to federal prison.

  Eli spent three years in a juvenile penitentiary before being transferred to a maximum-security prison in Marion, Illinois. Through his entire incarceration, my brother denied all attempts I made to contact him. In his mind, I was a Judas who betrayed his family. He saw our mother murdered from five feet away and our half-brothers and -sisters beaten. Raised to believe that the government was the enemy, Eli connected me to the greedy, corporate, controlling monster that destroyed our home and murdered our family.

  On the day of his release, I met him outside the gates, determined to be the first person he saw when he got out. After receiving nothing but a slew of insults, I
gave him my address and told him he was welcome anytime he wanted to talk. He never took me up on it. His last words to me were, “Someday, Jericho, this will all come back on you. And I will be there to see it.”

  Eli spent the next several years feeding his ability to find trouble. Too much of our father lived in him. He often found himself in confrontations with the law and did two more stints in jail. I hadn’t spoken to him in years, but he is never far. He is a shadow that trails me wherever I go, the other side of me that, try as I might, I cannot run from.

  Now he was back.

  Payback. After all these years.

  As hard as it was for me to believe that the brother I grew up with could be capable of such violence, it was hard to deny. The question was what to tell Torrez and Jagger. They needed to know who and what they were dealing with. But I couldn’t make the call. If they found Eli before I did, they would shoot first and worry about the repercussions later. I could not allow that. Whatever Eli had become, he was still my brother. I owed it to him to find him, to talk to him and try to stop him.

  The next six hours were spent trolling the city, searching motel parking lots for an old cream-colored Camaro with dented fenders. I checked the seedier places first, guessing that Eli would prefer the kinds of establishments that accepted cash and didn’t ask questions. There were more than I thought. Scores of them were scattered all over the county, many in places that made me grateful I was armed. None of them had Eli’s car. Which meant nothing. He could be out getting food, getting a drink. Killing somebody.

  I considered going inside and talking to the staff, slipping a wad of bills across the counter and asking if they had seen him, but decided against it. There were too many. I ended up driving in grids throughout the county, searching nightclubs and dives and topless bars. I drove with determination, knowing that Eli was somewhere out there and that I just had to find the right spot at the right time. But as I saw the sun rise through the windshield of my truck, I knew that I was kidding myself. My brother was too cunning to do something as obvious as check into the Motel Six or pull up a stool at a bar. He was hiding, lying in wait.

  I finally stopped at a diner off of War Memorial Drive that specialized in hot coffee, meat, and grease. All the things I was craving after a long, sleepless night of searching for a ghost. My usual table in the far corner was unoccupied so I took a seat, flipping the heavy ceramic mug upright.

  The place was full with the usual crowd, cops and city workers and young upward professionals in suits and ties who got to the office early to impress their bosses. At the counter sat Andrew Donovan, our former congressman before Preston Masters kicked him out of office. As always, he sipped coffee and worked the crossword puzzle in pen. I knew that he came here every morning and sat at the same spot, too accustomed to the morning routine he practiced for thirty years to change. Only now he had nowhere to go. The campaign had been ugly. Both men played dirty. Both bashed the other every chance they got. But with his father’s pedigree and the family war chest on his side, Preston had too much of an advantage. Donovan was maybe the one person in town who hated Preston more than I did.

  The diners all looked at me with hesitation, maybe not convinced that I was the person who was running around killing people, but not entirely convinced I wasn’t, either.

  Amber came over promptly. She was a student at Bradley University and worked the early morning shift before class. She had waited on me often and never let my coffee cup get empty or my food get cold.

  “You look like you’ve had a long night,” she said.

  “You could say that.”

  “Anything having to do with ... you know?”

  “The psycho running around killing people?”

  “Yeah. That.”

  “Maybe.”

  “I really hope you get him. I’m holding off on breaking up with my boyfriend just because I don’t want to be sleeping alone right now.”

  “We’ll get him.” It was the appropriate and expected response, but neither of us really believed it. Amber filled my mug from a steaming pot and said she would be back in a few minutes with my food. The murmur of conversation rose as the bell over the door chimed, announcing the arrival of Alyssa Jagger. Her eyes quickly fell on mine and she sat down opposite me, not waiting for an invitation.

  “Good food here,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  Jagger cracker her neck and rolled her shoulders, wringing exhaustion from her back like water from a wet towel.

  “So that homeless guy you talked to last night. He have anything interesting to say?”

  I sat back, knowing that I had already given too much away to waste energy denying it.

  “Good. You’re not going to play dumb. That’s actually refreshing,” Jagger said. She passed her iPhone across the table. The screen showed a picture of me leaning out the window of my truck. I slid it back.

  “Why didn’t you ask him what we talked about yourself?”

  “I did. But he refused to talk to me. He said he didn’t know you and had no idea what I was talking about. When I showed him the picture, he tried to pee on me.”

  “Seriously? He tried to pee on you?”

  “Yep. Stood up and whipped it out. I managed to get out of the way, but he got my car.”

  Jagger didn’t like my grin.

  “It’s not funny.”

  “Oh, I assure you, it’s very funny. You’re just not looking at it the right way.”

  “Where I was looking at it was from the splash zone.”

  I remembered him saying that the cops who came to hassle him were sometimes rough about it. It made sense that he would have a sore spot for members of law enforcement, even those who were hot. Or maybe he was just trying to get arrested so he could get a few square meals and a warm place to sleep.

  “So what did he say to you?” Jagger asked.

  “He gave me directions.”

  “Directions? Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “Directions that made you spend the next several hours driving all over three counties?”

  “They weren’t very good directions.”

  “You know, I really am trying to help. This defense mechanism of being a sarcastic prick doesn’t help.”

  “Believe it or not, you’re actually not the first person to tell me that.”

  Jagger’s eyes flared. Her response was on the tip of her lips and would have undoubtedly been stellar if not for the arrival of Amber. Jagger ordered a tall stack of pancakes, extra butter and syrup, and a side of bacon. I told her to put it on my ticket and lifted my cup with my right hand since my left was still bandaged.

  “How’s the hand?” Jagger asked.

  “Fine.”

  “You should really be more careful. I was following you all night, and please don’t bother pretending that you knew about it. I could have been our friend the Slasher. I could have taken you out any time I wanted.”

  “You wouldn’t have had much luck.”

  “Why? Because you’re carrying?” She motioned to my hand. “Are you telling me you can shoot straight with your hand bandaged like that? Because you can barely hold that coffee cup.”

  “Maybe I’m ambidextrous.”

  “And maybe you are going to get yourself or, more important, me or my partner, killed with your cowboy act.”

  “Your partner is an ass.”

  “Funny, he says the exact same thing about you.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “I think you’re smart enough to be useful, but unpredictable enough to be dangerous. Eddie wants you kept as far from this investigation as possible and under twenty-four-hour surveillance. I think you are too good of a resource to ignore. Whoever this killer is, the road to finding him goes through you. I’m open to working together on this. But I also think you’re hiding something. And I want to know what.”

  I drank my coffee, making her wait. I watched servers bring steaming dishes of food to their tables. I to
ok in the scent of the grill. Fat and grease and butter. My stomach growled with anticipation.

  “Well?” Jagger asked.

  “Maybe I’ll tell you. But first, I want to hear about what happened in that gas station that made you flee Kansas City.”

  Jagger’s cup froze halfway to her mouth. She recovered quickly, but the reaction was there. The look reminded me of her partner. Clearly, Jagger was not used to being caught off-guard.

  “You know about that, huh?”

  “I’m a writer. Most of what we do is research.”

  “Be careful about where you get your information.”

  “I’m trying to get it from you.”

  The bell over the front door chimed. Jagger and I watched a man in overalls walk to the counter and flop on a stool. He had the slumped shoulders of a third-shift worker, looking for a heavy dose of greasy carbs before sleep. Jagger watched him like a cop, studying his movements before deciding he wasn’t a threat.

  “I walked in on a robbery being committed by three known gang members with records longer than this table,” she said. “They opened fire on me and I defended myself. End of story.” It was recited in the same verbiage and diction that she undoubtedly used during the review. According to the records, it worked with them. But I wasn’t about to let her off the hook so easily.

  Our food came. We were both starving and quickly dug in. The food was everything diner food should be and I devoured it, contemplating ordering another round but not wanting to look like a pig.

  “I think that is just the beginning of the story.” I said.

  “What else is there?”

  “What happened to the clerk?”

  “He was killed in the crossfire.”

  “He wasn’t ducking down behind the counter?”

  Jagger rolled her eyes. “No. He had a sawed-off shotgun behind the counter. The guy was screaming and spraying deer-shot all over the goddamn store. Nearly hit me a few times, in fact.”

  I noticed that her speech pattern had become tight. She used short sentences and ended them with a snap of hard syllables. She looked down at her plate while she ate, avoiding eye contact. When Jagger finally looked up, she saw me grinning.