And here he was, all alone with a gun in his hand.
Oh yes, it certainly made her wonder. But although she stole several looks at his gun box before he left after shooting only two more targets, she saw no .38 special there, nor the kind of .45 ACP that had killed Douglas Ryan. There was a .38 semi-automatic, a .22 revolver, and the Hi-Standard he had been firing when she came in. Nothing else.
And if there had been, what would she have done? All her evidence was circumstantial. She had no solid reason for thinking Paul Blair a murderer beyond his religious zeal, and if that were a crime, there would be a lot of churches fenced in to become concentration camps.
Even so, she thought about placing a tail on him, but decided against it instantly. Too much money, too much time, and nowhere near enough cause. No, she would have to keep on plodding, doing the work as best she could, checking out the few leads that had come along, collating the elements until they made sense.
But she would keep Paul Blair in the back of her head.
Chapter 42
Right in the back of his head. That would be the way to do it. The skinny, long-haired prick would never know what hit him. Just like that smart-ass nigger had never known who it was who laid him in the mud that day back at camp. The Hand of God.
As for his transgression, Peter had no problems rationalizing several of them. First of all, Rand Evans was putting Jessica's soul in peril. Peter could see how confused she was about things, how much she wanted to come to Christ and to accept His will that she and Peter be together, but she could not because of her feelings for this rock singer. And that was all he was -- a rock singer, who, even though he claimed to sing to God's glory, was no better than the rest of the stoners and drunks who played that kind of trash.
And that was the second reason that Rand Evans should be disposed of -- he was trash, the kind of trash that sent the wrong messages despite his protestations to the contrary. To prove it to himself, Peter actually attended one of Sacred Fire's performances at a Christian music concert held at a college near Philadelphia. He went on a bus with a church group, and was pleased but not surprised to find Jessica there. She was friendly as always, and invited him to sit with her, an invitation he gladly accepted.
Except for the lyrics, which were barely understandable, Sacred Fire's set might just as well have been performed at a heavy metal concert. The band wore only leather, chains, and their own pale flesh. They beat at their guitars and drums as if trying to put out a fire, but their actions only ignited the emotions of their audience.
It was not to fervor and religious zeal that the young people were inspired, but rather to Dionysian ecstasy. The muddy lyrics were forgotten; the volume, the wailing, the primitive beat was everything. It turned potential worshippers into beasts, and Peter wondered how many of them would carry that savagery away with them, seeking out even wilder music, descending into even more degrading acts than the mindless head thrashing and fist shaking that Sacred Fire's music drove them to.
God could not be looking down and smiling at this. Jesus could not be happy.
But when Jessica turned and grinned and nodded at him, he grinned and nodded back, pretending that he thought this was just the greatest thing he had ever heard. And all the time his blood was aflame with its own sacred fire of love for Jessica and hate for Rand, that strutting, preening fairy up on stage, dancing around, his long hair flying like a woman's, his pale, thin arms exposed, tufts of blond hair sprouting underneath, plastered to his flesh by the sweat of his efforts.
Peter hated him.
Peter could not wait to kill him, and send him to judgment.
And yet he could not imagine doing so without talking, even circuitously, to Paul about it. Paul, for all his hesitation to do what Peter considered God's will, was still a hero to Peter. He still thought of him as his mentor, and valued their talks together, even though Paul had been far less spirited than before.
Peter had already determined how he could not only kill Rand, but also in the process kill any love that Jessica still had for him. But he needed Paul's imprimatur. So one day when they were in Paul's office, Peter brought up the subject of rock in general and Christian rock in particular, and asked Paul what he thought of it.
"I suppose it's all right," Paul said, somewhat absent-mindedly. It was as though he had little interest, and was thinking of something else as he talked. "My niece is dating a boy in a Christian rock band. I've never heard them, though."
Peter pretended that this information was new to him, but mentioned that he had seen Jessica at several meetings of the CCYC.
"Well then," said Paul, "it doesn't seem to be having a bad influence on her, does it?"
"No, not her," Peter answered. "But there are other kids..."
"What?"
"I don't know, Paul, they seem to be getting too much into it. It leads them to other kinds of rock, the vile kind. Metal and rap, horrible words and images...have you heard any of it? Gangster rap, or suicide metal?" As far as Peter knew, there was no such thing as suicide metal, but it sounded threatening.
"Not on purpose. I've read about it though."
"Then you know that a lot of these so-called 'artists' are ex-gang members, and there are some who even rape and kill people once they're successful. The way these songs treat women is awful."
Paul nodded.
"I don't think kids should be lured into that sort of thing. From there it's only a short step to violence and drugs."
"But you think Christian rock leads to this...other trash?"
"I think it can, it has the capability. It's like anything else, Paul. Like drugs or pornography. You keep wanting a little more, a little stronger stuff, and then before you know it you're hooked on cocaine or heroin. You get into hard rock, Christian or not, and soon you're listening to the rougher stuff, and you're getting into the lifestyle that it represents -- drugs, sex, even Satanism."
"So where do you stop, Peter?" Paul asked reasonably. "Do we ask our kids to only sing John Wesley? Is an acoustic guitar too much, because it might lead to electric guitars, which might lead to rock, which might in turn lead to the things you mention?" He shook his head. "I credit our kids with a little more sense than that. When I was young, I liked rock, but I never smoked marijuana or hot wired a car or threw a brick at a policeman."
"But your family was religious to start with. A lot of these kids don't have that advantage, and they're more easily lured away."
"Some of my Sunday school kids say these music festivals are wonderful. They come away charged with Christ. There's rock music, but there's also prayer and singing and worshipping together -- thousands of young people at one time with one purpose. Have you ever been to one?"
"No."
"Then I suggest you go before you condemn it. I think Jessica said there's one next month. So go, spend the weekend, and then see how you feel about it." Paul sighed gently. "Peter, I think your zeal for the right is a good thing. But we both know what that zeal can do if it's...out of control. So go and experience this for yourself. Keep an open mind. And if, afterwards, you feel this music is wrong, then fight it. By peaceful means, of course. All right?"
Fight it. That was what he wanted to hear. Peter already knew the evil that this music inspired, and now Paul had told him that he should fight it, so he would.
By peaceful means? Well, they would be means that Rand Evans would find peaceful. Peaceful and dark and quiet.
Chapter 43
Peter had found the solution to the problem of Rand Evans just the week before, when he was counseling a young man who had turned to Jesus to escape the chain of pornography that had bound him to Satan.
The man had frequented a store outside the Buchanan city limits in Minton Township. The store, identified only by a sign out front that read "ADULT VIDEOS -- MAGAZINES -- BOOKS," had formerly been a small supermarket, but now its windows and even its glass doors were painted over so that no one could see inside.
Peter had often driv
en past it, and once, two years before, had stopped in the parking lot and considered going in to see what kind of filth was sold inside. He had never seen hardcore pornography, and camouflaged his curiosity behind a screen of disapproving hostility. He could not, however, bring himself to walk into the store. Though he would not admit it to himself, he was afraid of a confrontation. Perhaps the owner would think him too young (for he was), or perhaps a homosexual might try to talk to him. If that happened, Peter did not know what he would do. So he found it easier to simply start his car again and drive away.
But he had often thought about the store and what fleshy treasures might be inside it. And now at last someone was telling him about it:
"I couldn't stay away from the place, you know? I spent so much of my time there, and a lot of my money."
“Why there,” Peter asked, “instead of on the Internet?”
“Internet you have to use a credit card. I don’t like that. At the store I just dropped cash.”
"What did you do while you were in there?"
"Browsed sometimes, used the booths a lot."
"The booths?"
"Video booths. You went in, stuck a token in the slot, watched a few minutes of a video. You gotta keep putting in the tokens to keep it going. And then I'd...well, you know."
"Masturbate?"
"Yeah. Into kleenex, take it out with me. Lotsa guys did it." Then he added, "But I know that didn't make it right. That's why I'm here. That's why I wanta come to Jesus now."
"What else...went on in there?"
"Well, sometimes I think that guys got together in the booths. I never did that, I'm straight, but they had gay stuff in there, some gay booths."
"Any prostitution?" Peter asked.
"No. I never saw a woman in there. Ever." He wrinkled his young, bearded face. "I think there mighta been some drug stuff going down too."
"You ever see it?"
"Sometimes guys'd come in, not looking at the porn at all, just go up to the counter, and they'd talk to Fatso, he's the guy runs it, and then Fatso'd take 'em in the room behind the counter. They come out in a minute, just walk out the door, not carrying anything, no magazines, no videos, nothing. That's why I thought maybe. I heard too, somebody said you can get almost anything drug-wise there, the whole works, even heroin."
When Peter heard that, his plan formed itself instantly, and he knew it was an inspired gift from the Lord. So he didn't urge the young man to tell the police what he had seen, nor did he report it himself. Maybe someday he would. But for now the information about the store had been delivered into his hands as a blessing, and he would not destroy it until he had made use of it to further God's will for his life.
Even though it was nearly a full month before the Glorisound Festival, Peter thought he had better make the arrangements immediately. It would be risky, but he had taken risks before.
He thought he should go in several times before asking for what he really wanted, so that night, after he finished work at Paul's store, he changed into the scruffiest clothes he had, and drove out to the adult shop. Taking a deep breath, he went in, and was relieved to see that there were only a few men there.
The man behind the counter, a short, stocky man whose stomach hid his belt buckle, ignored him, not even looking up from his copy of Sports Illustrated when Peter walked past him. The counter was on the right as Peter entered, and down the length of the room were several aisles filled with magazines, their covers exposed.
The contents stunned him with their explicitness. Even on the covers, there were clear, color photographs, extreme closeups of penises inside vaginas, women with penises in their mouths, women being taken orally, vaginally, and even anally by several men at the same time. There were women tied up, bound to beds with their legs spread while men masturbated on their naked bodies, and hundreds of other obscene variations on the same basic acts of which Peter Hurst, save for his experience as a child, was visually ignorant.
He felt half-sick, half-excited, and found that not only was his own penis stiffening, but that looking at the pictures for only a few moments had brought a drop of moisture to its tip, so that he could feel the embarrassing dampness against the fabric. He was glad he had worn jeans instead of khakis.
Peter wandered down the aisle toward the back of the store. There were several racks filled with DVDs for sale, with color boxes just as explicit as the magazines. A door marked "Video Booths" was closed, and Peter left it so.
He wandered about a bit more, until he came to a large, untenanted section with homosexual materials. The first cover he glanced at pictured a penis jammed into an anus, below which hung the sodomized man's enormous pair of testicles, and his own penis jutting upward out of sight.
Instantly, Peter felt lightheaded, and twisted away, closing his eyes for several seconds until once again he felt secure on his feet. Then he went back to the magazines he had first viewed, and tried to decide which to buy, for he wanted the man at the counter, who he assumed was Fatso, to notice him, and, in the next few weeks, to consider him a regular.
As he perused the covers, he felt excitement replace the sickness, and he grew hard again. One magazine, entitled Cum Club, drew his attention more than any other. On its cover, a naked woman was on her knees on a bed, her arms tied to the headboard, her hindquarters in the air. Her legs were slightly apart, revealing the shaven cleft of her vagina and her round, puckered anus. A man wearing a leather vest and open crotch pants that left his large, erect penis exposed was also kneeling on the bed, holding a wooden club a foot and a half long against the woman's right buttock, as though he were about to insert it into one of the exposed orifices.
Even as Peter told himself that he would buy this magazine only as a subterfuge, he knew that he had to have it, had to remove the sealed plastic bag and see what was inside. He was surprised to find that the price on the back was twenty dollars, but he would have paid even more.
He felt flushed as he took it to the counter and handed it to the man he thought was Fatso. Fatso eyed him critically. "You eighteen?"
Peter nodded. "Yeah," he said, trying to make his voice sound deeper than it was.
"Gotta see ID." Peter hated the idea of having the man know his name. He removed his driver's license from his wallet, held his thumb over his name, and extended it so that Fatso could see the date of birth. Fatso snatched it out of his hand, moved it back and forth in front of his squinting eyes until they focused, then looked at it for what seemed like ten minutes. Finally he handed it back.
"Twenny," he said, ringing up the sale on the register. "And a buck twenny for the governor. Twenny-one twenny." Peter paid him. The man didn't put the magazine into a bag, nor did he offer Peter a receipt.
Peter walked out of the store, the magazine under his coat. He looked around feverishly in the darkness, hoping that no one would see him. But after all, he thought, if they did, they were just as guilty as he.
Wait. He wasn't guilty, was he? He was doing this for a reason. That was why he had bought the magazine, to get Fatso to know him, and maybe trust him enough so that Peter could get what he really had come to the store for. It might take a while. Peter might have to buy more of those magazines. But it would be worth it. Jessica would be worth it all.
He thought about Jessica as he got into his car and ripped the plastic bag off the magazine, thought about her as he looked at the cover, and then as he opened it and looked at the pictures in the mercury vapor light of the parking lot. He was disappointed to find that the inside pictures were black and white, but they told a story in sequence, and he flipped through the pages feverishly. It began with the girl lying in bed, masturbating through her underwear, while from the window a man watched. He climbed through the window, stripped off the girl's scanty underclothes, and forced her to fellate him to climax, ejaculating over her face. He then tied her to the bed, penetrated her both vaginally and anally with the club, and then sodomized her. After he climbed out the window, the girl began to m
asturbate again.
Peter felt the heat rise in his groin as he looked at the photographs, and when he reached the pictures of the man sodomizing the girl, he ejaculated, the sensation made even more intense by the pressure of his jeans against his spasming penis.
That night he dreamed about Jessica, and was awakened by another orgasm.
Over the next few weeks he went to the adult book store every two or three nights, and bought a new magazine every time. Fatso began to acknowledge him with nods, and finally with a wry smile as he noticed the contents of the magazines Peter was buying.
"Like the rough stuff, do ya?" he said one night. "Got some DVDs back there you'd like."
Peter smiled and shook his head, embarrassed but also gratified by the notice. "Nah, I’m good."
Fatso shrugged and took the money for the magazine.
It was two weeks later, and a week away from the Glorisound Festival, that Peter decided to ask Fatso for what he really wanted. He went to the store late one night, and waited until the few people there had made their purchases and drifted out. Then he walked to the counter and said, "Excuse me" to the fat man, who looked up from his newspaper.
"I, uh, I heard," Peter went on softly, "that you might be able to get some...other things."
"Other things?"
"Well, like, uh, drugs?"
"'Well like uh drugs,' huh? Where'd you hear that?"
"Around, you know."
"Look, sonny, I been arrested for drugs twice now, and I ain't been convicted, and one of the reasons is that I don't sell nothin' over the counter -- if I do sell at all, which I'm not sayin' I do or I don't."
"Okay, well if you do, then I'd like something." Peter narrowed his eyes. "Something like heroin? And the stuff to use it with?"
Defenders of the Faith Page 21
