Genesis Code

by Jamie Metzl

  “What happened?” she says through her tears after a few minutes.

  “I don’t know,” I say as gently as I can. “That’s what I’m trying to figure out. She died at home yesterday. The police are investigating.” My staccato statement of facts feels brutally practical.

  Neary shudders. “What’re the police doing?”

  “Trying to figure out how she died.”

  “Do you know?”

  “I don’t, but I have questions.”

  “Like?”

  “Can I ask you about MaryLee?”

  She nods tentatively.

  “Do you know if she ever experimented with any kinds of drugs? Did she ever mention Blue Magic?”

  Neary pulls her head back in surprise. “Impossible. MaryLee didn’t drink alcohol, she didn’t even drink Coca-Cola.”

  “Did she ever do anything out of the ordinary? Was there anything about her that stuck out?”

  Neary pauses to think. “She did the right thing for everybody. She would do anything for her friends.”

  “Like?”

  “Like helping with my school work or driving me home at the end of the day. She brought me a care package when I had the flu a couple of months ago.”

  “Can you tell me what kind of car she drove?”

  Neary gives me a funny look. “A blue Kia Curve.”

  “Did she have a lot of friends?”

  “Just normal. She wasn’t one of those people who goes to parties or to the bars in Westport.”

  “Did she have a boyfriend?”

  Neary looks surprised. “Not that I knew of. It would have been hard to imagine.”

  “Why?”

  “She was waiting for ‘the one.’”

  “The one?”

  “The person who was meant to be.”

  “Meant to be by . . .”

  “By God, by Jesus. She was very religious, completely committed to her church in Springfield, where she’s from. I think Reverend Becker was very important to her.”

  “Cobalt Becker?” I say, surprised. “The Cobalt Becker?”

  Reverend Cobalt Becker had merely been an evangelical superpastor before the 2020 elections. Politics had made him much more over the past few years.

  Neary nods. “She didn’t talk much about it, but once she did mention that it was a lot of pressure to be ‘the chosen one.’”

  “What do you think she meant by that?”

  “I asked but she didn’t really say.”

  “Anything else about her that stood out?”

  “I don’t know, Mr. Azadian. She was just a really good person, a kind and giving person.” Neary is shaking and holding back tears.

  “Can I call you Neary?” I ask, switching tack to try to calm her.

  She nods apprehensively.

  “Neary, I am trying to find out what happened. Most likely she died of some kind of health condition. People die of strange things all the time—brain aneurysms, SDS, all sorts of things.”

  I hear my words but I’m not convinced I believe them. Something about the dot on MaryLee’s arm has been giving me the unsettling feeling this isn’t just a natural causes story. But there’s no need to torture this poor girl with unsubstantiated suspicions.

  “Can I ask you one more question?”

  Neary nods.

  “Had MaryLee shown any signs of being sick?”

  Neary takes a deep breath. “For the last couple of months she just hasn’t looked like herself. She looked tired. She tried to hide it, but I could tell. She just didn’t seem right.”

  “Did you have any idea what it was?”

  “She told me she was fine, that she must have caught a stomach bug.” Neary pauses for a moment. “Maybe somehow I thought this could happen. My parents taught me about these things.”

  “These things?”

  “Impermanence, that people can be lost. They grew up in Cambodia.”

  “Neary,” I say, “can I ask you a favor?”

  She nods.

  “Can I leave you my u.D contacts and ask you to contact me if you think of anything that might be relevant?”

  “What do you think happened to her?” Neary asks.

  “I really don’t know, but I promise you I’ll do my best to find out. Are you going to be okay?”

  She nods but I’m not so sure.

  We wave our u.Ds toward each other before I get into my car.

  I tap in Joseph from the road.

  “Abraham,” he says.

  “Surveillance cameras at UMKC?”

  “At the Hospital Hill Café and in the parking lot.”

  “Can we get the feeds from Monday at around 3:40?”

  “I don’t think so, boss. They’ll only show them to the police.”

  “Anything else?”

  “I called the security company that does the electronic surveillance for from Whitehall. I told them I was calling from the Whitehall Homeowners Association and wanted to see the feeds from Monday. They put me on hold for a moment then told me they’d already told the police that the feeds had been scrambled for about an eight-hour period that day. She said that sometimes happens when there’s too much interference in the area.”

  “Wow,” I say, “at just the time MaryLee seems to have died.”

  “Looks like it,” Joseph says. “And Carol Stock just checked in to the downtown Marriott. She was early, so they put her in another room. It’s 933.”

  6

  My three gentle knocks barely register on the door.

  I hear shuffling inside room 933 but no footsteps approaching.

  I knock harder.

  “Who is it?”

  The harsh male voice throws me. “Rich Azadian from the Kansas City Star.”

  “What do you want?” the gruff voice asks.

  “I’d like to speak with Carol Stock.”

  I don’t know what to make of the ensuing silence.

  “Nobody here cares to speak with you,” the voice says after a pause.

  “With whom do I have the pleasure of speaking?” I ask, unable to contain my inner smart-ass.

  “That’s none of your concern. Do I need to call security?”

  “No need to call security,” I say, “I’m leaving now.”

  Why would someone accompanying a grieving mother not care to identify himself and threaten to call security? I walk down the hall to the small enclave and hide in the shadow beside the ice machine to get a clear line of sight to the room.

  After about forty-five minutes the door opens and a man’s head pops out, looking right then left down the corridor. Hearing the sound of footsteps walking toward me, I slide deeper into the dark space. I only get a glimpse of the two people walking by, a heavyset woman whom I immediately identify as Carol Stock and a lanky priest with dark hair looking to be in his mid-thirties.

  I hear the elevator bell ring and the door open and close before rushing to the elevator bank to follow. I find them just outside the lobby door waiting for the valet to bring a car.

  “Hello,” I say, unable to think of anything more creative.

  Carol Stock looks at the priest as if expecting him to take charge.

  He steps between her and me. “I presume you are the reporter from the Kansas City Star,” he says.

  “I am.”

  “Then you must know why we are here.”

  “I do.”

  “And you must understand why we’d like to be left alone.”

  “I do,” I say, remaining where I am.

  The priest’s angled face contorts as rage passes from his body to his face to his eyes and then at me. “Now,” he orders.

  I take a step back. “And you are?”

  He glares at me for the few moments until the car arrives and the two get in and drive away.

  I hit speed dial 3 on my u.D.

  “Abraham.”

  “Joseph, can you find out who else may be staying in room 933.”

  “I already have that record up, boss, it�
�s just Carol Stock.”

  “Then how about anyone else who checked in at around the same time and may be staying in a room near hers?”

  “I’ll call you back in five minutes.”

  I wander through the lobby waiting for the call, stopping for a moment in front of the large screen blanketing the bar wall. The AJN reporter is describing yet another aggressive march on Washington by religious leaders and their followers shouting that the emerging field of synthetic biology, making life out of inert elements, is an affront to God’s plan. It’s not an official King rally, but it may as well be.

  The u.D vibrates.

  “Room 935,” Joseph says, “checked in two minutes after Carol Stock. The name is Ezekial DeWitt.”

  “And he is?”

  “I’m just calling that up on my screen now. Ezekial DeWitt, thirty-five years old, associate pastor of the Holy Virgin Church of Christ, originally from Texas. Graduate of Southern Methodist University with a Master’s degree in biology.”

  “From Cobalt Becker’s church?”

  “Yes, boss.”

  “That’s interesting,” I say. “I just learned from one of MaryLee’s classmates at the pharmacy school that MaryLee was involved with Becker’s church and mentioned it was difficult being the ‘chosen one.’”

  “What does that mean, boss?”

  “I don’t know,” I say pensively. “Keep working on the surveillance feeds. We’ll talk later.”

  Images of Cobalt Becker invade my mind as the call drops.

  Anyone interested in Missouri politics, let alone political junkies like me, knows about Becker, at least since the 2020 elections. Now, in the run-up to the 2024 presidential race, he’s become a key national voice in the raging culture wars and one of Senator King’s most important backers.

  Being a “spiritual advisor” to King was one thing when it was just politics but another when things started to get really ugly.

  Both then Governor Lewis and Senator King had denounced the bombs detonated at two biotech research centers and three abortion clinics that led to fourteen deaths around the time of the 2020 Republican primaries. A secretive group of evangelical zealots called Eden’s Army, which had pledged to use “all Godly force necessary” to defend the sanctity of life, was eventually blamed for the attacks. The group had no official tie to King but the experience made clear that many of King’s followers were answering to a higher authority.

  In spite of the violence, the cause marched on with Becker right behind Senator King, Bible in hand, leading his dedicated army of salvation. If Lewis and Alvarez’s centrist alliance of Democrats and Republicans was calling for the renewal of America, King positioned himself at the vanguard of the religious right by calling for the country’s reincarnation. If Lewis finished his speeches with the requisite “God bless America,” King took it one step further with “God shall overcome.”

  People like Cobalt Becker had been almost irrelevant when the country was obsessed with its bond rating or the perceived growing danger of fast-rising China. When culture and morality re-emerged as the great dividing issues in American politics and interpreting God’s will once again became an incredible source of power, suddenly they were kingmakers.

  Well, I remind myself, almost King-makers. King lost the nomination to Lewis in 2020, but now all bets are off as King, backed by the evangelical surge, prepares to challenge the president once again for the 2024 Republican nomination.

  Is it news that someone from Becker’s church dies a premature death? Probably not. Is it news that the church sends a minister with the grieving mother down to Kansas City? Doubt it. Is it news that the priest acts suspiciously, refuses to identify himself, and has a mien filled with rage? Add a track mark and scrambled surveillance feed? Is it news that Cobalt Becker is involved in anything even borderline questionable just when his support for Senator King could potentially be the deciding factor in determining the next Republican candidate for the presidency of the United States?

  “The question is at least juicy,” I say to myself as I head down Highway 7 South to Springfield.

  7

  There are two shrines in Springfield, Missouri.

  The first is the Bass Pro Shop. The magnitude of the 500,000-square-foot log cabin on steroids with its endless departments and indoor fishing stream seems designed to overwhelm the senses.

  The second, just a few miles away, is built to inspire a similar awe. Holy Virgin Church of Christ looks from the outside more like a shopping mall than a church. The building leans forward with a central spire reaching for the sky and the two smaller points, one on each side, ready to hug, or perhaps swallow, the Lilliputians approaching the door.

  When I’d announced to my friends from U.C. Davis I was moving to Kansas City, all anyone could think of was the Wizard of Oz. This is Missouri, not neighboring Kansas, but maybe, I think, as I enter the oversized glass doors of the Holy Virgin Church of Christ, Oz exists and I’ve found it.

  The full interior wall above the reception desk is a massive screen with the enormous digital image of Reverend Cobalt Becker opening his arms wide then beckoning me in. The image then fades and is overtaken by a bright light. Slowly, bit by bit, new images are woven into the scene. First brown dirt blows and settles on the ground. Then a river begins to trickle through. Vegetation grows under the rising sun until a rabbit hops into the picture and wiggles its nose, followed by birds and deer. It’s only when a snake slithers toward an apple tree that I finally recognize what I am witnessing.

  “Hi, may I help you?”

  I’m so mesmerized by the images that the words startle me.

  The receptionist’s thick makeup and auburn hair pulled tightly back in a bun give her a severe but attractive Miss America look.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I say, finally focusing on her. “I’m looking for Reverend Becker.”

  “We’re all looking for Reverend Becker,” she says dreamily in a mild Southern accent.

  Her comment hangs awkwardly in the air.

  “I’m from the Kansas City Star. I’m looking into the death of the member of this congregation.”

  She taps her u.D.

  “Becky,” she whispers, “there a gentleman here from the Kansas City Star who says he wants to speak with the pastor about the death of a member of the congregation.”

  The receptionist listens earnestly for a moment to the voice coming through her earpiece. “No, he did not,” she says. She nods in response to what she is hearing. “Yes, ma’am,” she replies before tapping off. She focuses her eyes on me. “Mister . . . ?”

  “Azadian.”

  She bites her lower lip for a fraction of a second as if trying to figure out what I am. “Mr. Azadian, please have a seat in the waiting room. Rebecca Stevenson will come greet you in a moment.”

  Our business completed, her face returns to its neutral state of bliss.

  The interaction somehow bothers me.

  I don’t remember when precisely I’d become so suspicious of organized religion, especially on this larger-than-life scale. It hit me early on in Armenian school that no matter how much I valued doing the right thing, the institutions designed to make people do it in the name of one ultimate truth generally ended up corrupting themselves, killing people, or doing bad in the name of good. After Astrid’s death, the whole edifice seemed even more ridiculous to me.

  On top of that, I could never get over the whole virgin birth thing. My mind rolls through the options I’d so carefully contemplated in Armenian Orthodox Sunday school.

  Option one. Mary is visited by the Holy Spirit, a mysterious entity no one has ever before heard of, and impregnated. This Holy Spirit, I think that’s what he said his name was, transfers a full set of genetic material to link with Mary’s and a beautiful baby boy pops out. Which haplogroup did the Holy Spirit belong to again?

  Option two. Mary has a fling with a dashing herdsman from down valley or an itinerant carpet salesman from the Bethlehem suburbs. A couple of mon
ths later she feels the bulge in her stomach and starts to panic. What is she going to tell her loyal and trusting husband? They’ve never slept together, so a whole range of excuses are off the table. She frets, she tosses and turns. Then the idea comes to her in a dream. It was a virgin birth, the Holy Spirit visited, that’s who.

  Poof. A new religion is born and tens of millions of people are slaughtered in the name of this white lie over the next two thousand years. Makes a person want to be careful about what stories they spin to their spouse. I wasn’t having an affair honey, I was out bowling. Poof. The crusaders are marching with fire in their eyes to punish the pagan heretics who dare defy the magic bowling god.

  Or maybe Joseph was just the dad.

  Of course, I was kicked out of Sunday school class repeatedly for my irreverence.

  My eyes wander around the waiting room.

  The large images flashing across the digital wall tell the story. A fresh, thin Cobalt Becker, his young wife beside him, hammering a sign into the ground in front of a small, dilapidated church. SERVICES SUNDAY, 10:00, COME HUNGRY, YOUR SOUL WILL BE SERVED.

  The next image, clearly taken inside the same church, captures the energy of the long-haired rock band, the rapturous faces of the packed congregants, the confident smirk of the slightly larger Cobalt Becker at the front of the dais.

  In the third, a rounder Becker, his wife and two small children beside him, stands with arms outstretched like Moses in front of a bigger church. Congregants wander in the foreground like new homeowners.

  The next images are almost a series. Becker with the Republican governor of Missouri, a larger Becker cutting a ribbon in front of an office building with a banner reading “Inspiration Ministries,” a smiling Becker with headphones in a radio studio, Becker in a cowboy hat surrounded by cattle.

  At the groundbreaking photo for the current site, I recognize most of the state Republican dignitaries, especially Senator King. King was no dummy. The most successful businessman in the impoverished boot heel of Missouri’s southeast corner, he had planted political seeds around the state for years with strategic contributions to Republican candidates, all of whom then backed his election as chairman of the state party. It had been among the state’s worst-kept secrets he wanted more. But a business leader with strategic political backing and no political base does not a successful politician make. King probably felt the same. That’s when he, so to speak, found Jesus.