by Tracy Clark
“I’ll stand,” I said.
Cummings frowned and looked as though he might argue the point. I wondered how far I could push him, how far he’d let me go.
“Take it or leave it.”
Cummings aimed the gun at me. “See? That right there? That’s what got us into this mess. You just would not let this thing die. You kept picking at it and picking at it.” He glanced nervously at the front doors as though he were expecting someone. I had a pretty good idea who.
“I told you the police have Amon. He’s probably talking by now, telling them everything. He didn’t strike me as the self-sacrificing type.”
Cummings’s lips curled into a snarl. “Or you could be lying.”
I took a step forward, my eyes on his. “I’m not. I don’t usually. I found Amon hiding out at your business. He tried to kill me. He didn’t. Let them go. Let’s end this.”
Cummings didn’t look at all like the jovial good old boy I’d met before. This was someone meaner, someone else entirely. Barb sat straight in the pew, outwardly calm. She didn’t spook easily. George Cummings didn’t know it, but he’d snatched the wrong Covey, not that there was a right Covey to snatch. My father was in a suit again, as though he’d dressed for dinner out and had had his plans diverted. He looked only at me, which made me a little nervous. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms. I’d accused him of murder and had stuck to it. I guess I was wrong about that. Maybe that’s what his look was for? A great big I told you so?
As compelling as the muzzle of Cummings’s gun was, I glanced over at the empty confessional where I’d found Pop’s body. He was the father I wanted and couldn’t save. How strange it was to see the man who’d left me behind sitting in the front pew of his church. Someone, somewhere had a twisted sense of humor. I turned back to Cummings, willing him to drop dead, hoping he’d suffer on his way to Hell. My arms were still up, but getting tired.
I could tell Cummings was thinking things through, likely trying to find an angle that worked for him. He had to know that he couldn’t get out of this, that there was no place he could run. I kept talking, looking for an angle of my own. I wondered if the side door was locked, or if the front door I’d just come through was the only way out.
“You trashed my office. Looking for . . . what?” My eyes swept over the altar, the marble floor under it as slick as glass. An ornate runner had been placed at the foot of it to keep parishioners from slipping down and breaking a hip when they came up for their Communion wafer. George Cummings stood there as still as a mountain, watching me, perhaps deciding if he had it in him to kill three more.
“I had to know what you were up to, how close you were getting. I sent Amon.” He grinned. “He had a real good time wrecking your place.”
Up until then, I’d regretted beaning Amon with the pipe. Now I wished I’d beaned him twice. The gun didn’t look comfortable in Cummings’ hand. He wasn’t used to holding one, I could tell. His aim wouldn’t be steady, his shot wouldn’t be sure. That made him all the more dangerous.
“Nothing like teamwork, I suppose. Mind my asking how you two got together?”
Cummings chuckled. “I gave him a job. Turned out he had some pretty impressive skills.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a string of black rosary beads, which he held tight in his free hand.
Hypocrite, I thought. Rosary beads in one hand, a gun in the other. He was a murderer. He’d taken lives in this church, right where he was standing now. Beads. The evidence techs had found beads under a front pew when they swept the crime scene. Hadn’t Yancy said something about beads falling like rain?
“You tried to stop Yancy,” I said. “That’s when you broke your rosary beads.”
He held the rosary up. “I have others.”
“But the ones the police found,” I said, “will have your prints on them.”
He looked nervous, but tried not to show it. The gun wavered just a little. “That won’t matter after tonight.”
“Which one of you killed Father Ray?”
He didn’t answer.
“The three of us are dead anyway, right? You’ve got the gun. What have you got to lose?”
Cummings looked down at the gun in his hand. I could see it made him confident he had the upper hand. I could see the smug satisfaction on his face, almost feel the surge of dominance in the set of his shoulders. “It doesn’t matter how or who, only why.”
“I already know why. You were trying to keep Cesar Luna away from your stepdaughter. How you did it, the lengths you went to, that’s where you messed up.”
“Father Ray started this. He said it’d be okay to send Dee Dee to Gentle Peace where she met that banger. I did everything, grounded her, took her phone, followed her, nothing worked. Then I found out he knew they were together!”
“That’s when you argued in his office,” I said. “It wasn’t about the homeless.”
“He tried to tell me that boy was okay, that he had changed, that everybody deserved a chance to turn their lives around. I told him he’d pay for what he did. I told him I’d make him pay.”
My jaw clenched. “So you started harassing him, following him, but he wouldn’t turn you in.”
“He tried to shove that banger down my throat! He had no right!” His angry voice bounced off the church walls. I cringed. This wasn’t the place for angry voices.
“So, you lured them both here and killed them,” I said.
“Father Ray arranged a meeting. He called it his peace summit, if you can believe that. Like I’d trust him after what he did.”
“He hid your family from you,” I said. “So they’d be safe.”
“They were safe with me! He waited till I wasn’t there and snuck them right out from under me!”
So, it wasn’t Cummings Mrs. Gibson saw leaving with his family that morning; it was Pop. Good for him, I thought, a slow smile creeping over my face. Good for him.
Our eyes locked. “Cesar’s mother deserves to know who killed her son.”
Cummings scoffed. “Amon solved that little problem for me.”
“And you killed Father Ray. Because it was personal.”
His eyes narrowed. “He overstepped. He put ideas in Janice’s head, in Dee Dee’s. He wasn’t her father. He didn’t know anything about being a father.” Barb and I exchanged a look. She could tell Cummings’s words landed hard. He grew agitated, began to pace around the marble floor, up and down the runner, tugging at his clothes, his eyes darting around the place.
“I don’t believe you about Amon. You’d say anything to get them out of here. If the police had him, they’d be here by now, and you wouldn’t be. No, I finish this, you and them, and the clock resets. I get my family back, or I move on and find myself another one” He flicked the gun in the direction of the first pew. “Enough talking. Get over there with them.” He raised the gun when I stayed put. “You’re not moving.”
No, I wasn’t moving. I wanted to divide his attention between Barb and my father and me. If I kept him off balance, kept him looking from them to me and back, maybe he’d make a mistake. I eased my arms down. He didn’t notice. “One more question, then I will. Who dragged him into the confessional?” I wanted it all, every bit of it.
Cummings paced along the altar runner, up and back, onto the marble floor, back off it. “I didn’t drag him; I made him walk there on his own. He needed to confess for disrespecting me. I couldn’t get him to put the gun to his head, of course, the stubborn old fool. In the end, I had to do that myself.”
I shut my eyes, trying to get the image out of my head, knowing I never would. When I opened them again, they met Cummings’s. He laughed. “But you haven’t heard the funny part yet. He forgave me. Right before I put his hand on the gun and pulled the trigger. He forgave me.”
My breath caught, held. I stood there, out of the world, yet still in it.
Cummings stepped up to the altar, ran his hand along the table as though he owned it, as though it were his, not Pop�
�s. “Janice is just confused right now, thanks to Father Ray, but I’ll turn her around. I’ll correct Dee Dee’s behavior, too. I surely will.” He stared at me, grinning. “You know where they are, I know you do, and you’re going to tell me.”
He was wrong about that. Hell would freeze over first.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out Pop’s datebook. “You blame me. I can see it in your eyes.” Cummings had helped carry Pop’s casket, all the while knowing he’d been the one to end his life. No, it wasn’t blame he saw; it was rage and sorrow. “But it’s all in here, every meeting he arranged, all the advice he gave them for getting around me. He wrote it all down.” There it was, I thought. I’d been searching for it all this time, and there was Pop’s datebook right in front of me. Cummings held it up, smiled. “I took it off his dead body, slipped it right out of his pocket.”
Cummings slid a gold plate toward him on the altar and placed the book in it. He eyed a candlestick, felt his pockets. “Anyone have a match?”
“Don’t!” I yelled. It was Pop’s. I wanted it. “Give it to me.”
“It connects the banger to my house,” Cummings said, “and to me. I should have burned it already, but doing it now in front of you feels like a better idea, since you seem to want it so bad.”
My eyes stayed glued to the book. “Monster,” I muttered, my voice carrying.
“What’s that? Monster?” Cummings’s eyes widened. “Not me, him. . . .
“Burning it won’t do you a bit of good,” I said. “You’re done.”
Cummings pulled a lighter from his pocket. He’d prepared for this. He meant to burn it, here, in front of me, just like this. “It’ll do me a world of good. That’s all that matters.” He rolled the lighter in his hand playfully, taunting me with it. “ Did I ask if you had a gun?”
I said nothing. He walked toward me, away from the plate, back toward the steps. “I didn’t, but I should have, right?”
The answer, of course, was an obvious yes, but did he really expect me to suggest a frisk search? Slowly, Cummings pointed the gun at my father’s head. Maybe he expected me to cry out, plead and wring my hands, and beg for the old man’s life? My non-reaction seemed to confuse him.
“He is your father, at least that’s what he said.”
“You overestimate the depth of our relationship.”
Cummings blew out a heavy breath and shook his head, a gesture that, from where I stood, looked an awful lot like pity. “See? Another disrespectful daughter; you’re as bad as Dee Dee, thankless, disobedient, ungrateful. So it’s okay with you if I shoot him, is that it?”
I glanced at my father sitting there, his eyes as still as death. I didn’t see fear in them, as I thought I might; I saw resolve, which unsettled me more. Cummings quietly slipped his finger inside the trigger guard. That’s as close as I wanted him to get.
“All right. It’s here.”
He swiveled the gun back and watched as I took my jacket off, moving in slow motion, not making any sudden movements. I then slowly walked the jacket over to the nearest pew and draped it over the back, as far away from him as I could get it. I lifted the bottom of my sweater and pulled a .9mm out of my tuck holster, held it up. “Come and get it.”
Cummings wasn’t going for that. “Lay it on the steps and move away.”
I did as instructed, setting the gun down, pushing it away from me, and moving back out of reach of it. “Where’s this going, George?”
He carefully picked up my gun, sneered. We both knew where it was going. “You’re real hard to kill, you know it?” He returned to the altar and put my gun in the gold plate, as though it were a Communion offering. Did he intend to burn it, too? He was moving toward the front pew now, toward Barb and my father, and away from my jacket. I didn’t dare look at it. I didn’t want to get him thinking about it. I’d slipped my Glock in the pocket, a backup in case I needed it. It was looking like I might. “Maybe one of them will be easier.”
“Real brave, George! There’s not much challenge to killing an old man and a nun, is there? Or are they all you can handle?”
I hoped the taunts would make him angrier, draw him away from the pew. I mounted the altar steps, stood there on the top one, just shy of the runner, an easy target. “You got me here. Deal with me first.”
He turned toward me. Good, I thought. That was good. “You shut your mouth!”
“Why don’t you come and shut it for me, you murdering nutcase!?”
He didn’t move, only watched. I smiled. “I didn’t think so. You’re just another bully. I’m tired, George. I’m going to sit. Let me know if you change your mind.” I sat on the top step, watching him as he stood there, angry, confused, wondering what I was up to, figuring out what he was going to do about it. “All talk, no action. I see now Amon Jarvis was the brains and the muscle of the operation.”
Barb looked as though she might faint. My father’s expression never changed, but he’d folded his hands tightly in his lap, a little too tightly. Cummings headed my way, along the wide runner, the edge of it within arm’s length of me. The gun in his hand was there to prove just how capable he was. I braced, biding my time till he got just a little closer. I watched his feet while I appeared not to watch them, then, when he hit the right spot, I reached down and yanked the runner out from under him, tripping him up. I bolted up, watching, as he fought unsuccessfully to regain his footing. His arms windmilled out; he teetered on his heels. When he hit the floor, his head bounced back, and the gun flew out of his hand, clattering to the marble and spinning away like a child’s top, the fast-moving metal scratching, twirling across the floor.
I tracked the skittering gun, then turned to Barb, my father. “Get out of here, both of you!” Neither of them moved. “Go, I said!”
I searched the floor frantically, my hungry eyes sweeping right, left, and back again. I needed the gun. There. I spotted it. It had come to rest beside the organist’s bench halfway between the vestry door and the altar table. I took off running for it, knowing Cummings was struggling to get up, to get his feet untangled from the runner. I knew two things at that moment: the one who got to the gun first probably wouldn’t die, and the last one to get to it probably would.
Cummings was up now and headed for me. I dove for the gun and reached out for it, my hand clenching the grip. I had it. I wouldn’t die. I heard a roar behind me and turned, horrified to find Cummings standing over me, reaching out. Before I could move, crawl away, or shoot, he stomped down on my right knee with his full weight, and I let out the mother of all screams, the ferocity of it bouncing off the walls, rattling the candlesticks. He grabbed for the gun, but I slung it away before he could touch it, sending it sliding again along the shiny floor out of his reach, and out of mine.
My knee was on fire, the pain white-hot and seering. I lay there waiting to get my breath back, looking up into the same face Pop had, finding nothing human, nothing decent in it. And then it began to rain hymnals.
The first hit Cummings squarely in the back of the head, stunning him. The second got him in the same spot, and he fell to his knees, shielding his head in his hands. The next barely missed my head. My right leg went numb, the agony nearly blinding, but still I thought it strange that it was raining hymnals. The next salvos, hymnals four, five and six, knocked Cummings off his knees. That was my shot.
I lifted myself up, muffling another scream. It was Barb pitching the books. She hadn’t gone, as I’d told her to, and she had excellent aim. I flipped over on my stomach and slid along the floor, searching for the gun I’d tossed away. Sliding, dragging my right leg, I swam along the floor, my knee a throbbing mess of uselessness. I stopped a moment, nauseous, listening for the sound of the hymnals finding their target before starting up again.
It was slow going, my arms straining to do the work. I didn’t see the gun. It wasn’t where I thought it should be. I had to stop again, sweat beading on my brow and upper lip, my eyes watering from the pain. The gun was gone. I
t didn’t compute. Why was the gun gone? Then I remembered the altar plate. My. 9mm was in the altar plate.
I spun around, swam in the opposite direction, toward the altar table. It took forever, or felt like it. The hymnals kept coming. I pulled myself up, biting my lip, ignoring the fact that my knee wouldn’t bend, balancing my weight entirely on the only working leg I had left. The plate was there, Pop’s datebook, too, the gun was not. It made no sense. I grabbed the book and stuffed it into a pocket. Mine now. I glanced back at Cummings. He was lying on his back, heaving for air, done in by church books. Barb stood by, an armful more, waiting to hurl them too. And there was my father with a gun in his hands, the gun pointed at Cummings. It was my gun from the altar plate.
“Don’t you move,” he warned.
I hobbled toward him, hopped mostly. “No. Stop.” I held my hands out. “Give me the gun.”
My father’s eyes smoldered with fury. It was a side of him I don’t think I’d ever seen before. “No one messes with my little girl!”
I stared at him, not sure what to make of the display. Where’d that come from? What little girl? Who was this man? “He’s done,” I said, wiggling my fingers insistently. “Give it to me.” He gave Cummings a final look, then reluctantly handed the gun over. “Now both of you, run! Get going!”
Barb didn’t move. My father didn’t move. “Barb. Drop the friggin’ books and get out of here. Take him with you.”
“Look at you,” she said, her dander good and up. “We’re not leaving.”
I pointed toward the front of the church. ”Someone has to call the police. Will you get out of here?!”
That did it. They raced down the center aisle, looking back every other step to check to see if I needed an assist, finally disappearing through the doors, finally safe. I bit my lip as a wave of pain shot through me. When I turned around, Cummings wasn’t where I’d seen him last. He stood behind the altar table, fully recovered now from the hymnal missiles, holding the gun I hadn’t been able to find. For a half second, I forgot my knee and wondered peevishly how he was able to find it when I couldn’t.
