Crown of Thorns (Nick Barrett Charleston series)

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “The name of the white-haired man?”

  “No. The name of the detective agency. Mixson. So right away I was curious—like what does Grammie Zora have to do with a detective agency and what’s this about? But I didn’t ask.

  A person don’t mess with Grammie Zora.”

  “And the white-haired man?”

  “Grammie Zora told me where I’d find him, and she told me not to take any black friends with me. Said she was asking me because I was white and this was a place only white folk should go.”

  I’d shut down the headlights of the Jeep. The darkness was a comfortable blanket. I’d grown so accustomed to the music of the Velvets for Gents that it was no more distracting than crickets in the countryside.

  “You went,” I said. “Alone. That night. Just as soon as she asked.”

  “You kidding, man? This was Grammie Zora speaking.”

  “Did she tell you why she wanted you to find this man for her?”

  “Smoke, man,” Bingo said to Leroy.

  Leroy had quick movements, almost sparrowlike, a strange contrast to his size. I guessed that Bingo used the age difference to be his leader. Leroy reached up the sleeve of his sweatshirt, took out a pack. He pulled a cigarette halfway out, extended it to Bingo. Bingo took it and spoke to me without looking in Leroy’s direction.

  “No, I didn’t ask Grammie Zora why she wanted him. Like right now I ain’t asking why she don’t bother to explain all this to you herself. That’s a mysterious woman with mysterious powers. I keep clear of her. That man I found for her, he was just as scared, once I delivered the message she wanted me to deliver.”

  Leroy flicked a lighter. Bingo half turned and sucked at the flame through his cigarette. Leroy drew on his own cigarette. Two glowing buds faced me in the darkness of the parking lot.

  “I heard that doctors take the lungs of smokers at an autopsy and bounce them off the floor,” I said. “Weird, huh?”

  Leroy flicked his cigarette onto the pavement. Bingo laughed and inhaled deeply.

  “Grammie Zora’s message . . .” I prompted.

  “Grammie Zora told me the man might not want to follow me back. She said all I’d have to do is tell him one thing, and he’d listen, no matter what he was doing when I called on him. She was right. That woman’s got the power.”

  “What was the message?”

  “ ‘Crown of thorns. I know what you are doing. Crown of thorns.’ ”

  “Crown of thorns?” I repeated.

  “Yeah. I found the place easy. It was a church, Glory God something. I had to go through a gate. Imagine that. A church with a security gate. Some guy guarding it with a shotgun. I told him who I wanted to see. He took me went inside and the white-haired man was sitting there with two men so big that bears would run from them. I wanted to git. But I was more scared of Grammie Zora and what she’d say if I came back alone. So I looked past the two big men with the beards and told the white-haired man what Grammie Zora told me to tell him, exactly word for word. He wasn’t interested in listening to me.”

  “ ‘Crown of thorns. I know what you are doing. Crown of thorns.’ ” I made sure I repeated exactly what Bingo had just said.

  “Yup. That made all of them real quiet. And the white-haired man told his friends it was okay, he’d go. So all of them followed me into town in a big black Escalade, right behind me all the way. What I’d give for one of those if I could afford the gas.”

  “This church, you remember how to get there?”

  Bingo nodded. “But Grammie Zora’s note didn’t say anything about taking you there. I don’t want to go back. And I never want to see them again. One was bigger than the other, way bigger. He stared at me so hard it was like his eyes could kill me.” Bingo gave me directions.

  I thanked him. “You’re a smart kid,” I said. “How many more Saturdays you think you can park here until it’s a cop who shows up instead of buyers?”

  “What else am I gonna do? Flip burgers for a couple bucks an hour? At least I’m not peddling drugs and hurting kids that way.”

  I thought of his neighborhood. All the things in his background that had likely brought him to this place. I didn’t have a short answer that wouldn’t make me sound like a tired, self-

  righteous WASP born south of Broad. And the long answer?

  That involved more than I wanted to give.

  I didn’t answer at all. I began to climb into my Jeep.

  “Hey,” Bingo said. “It’s only because I’m scared of Grammie Zora that I’m gonna tell you something else.”

  I waited, door open to my Jeep.

  “You never asked me for the white-haired guy’s name,” Bingo said. “That was something weird, too. Grammie Zora told me to call him by his name in case ‘crown of thorns’ didn’t get his attention.”

  “And?”

  “Don’t know what the big deal was.” Bingo said it casually, unaware of the electrical current of shock it would put through me. “It’s not like I ever heard of him before. The white-haired dude’s name is Timothy Larrabee.”

  Chapter 8

  “Nick? Sorry to wake you but . . .”

  Seven in the morning. The voice in my ear was coming from Chicago. An hour earlier than Charleston. That meant Amelia Layton had called me in the hotel either at the end or beginning of a shift.

  “Hey,” I said, my voice a little thick. “Had to get up anyway to answer the phone.”

  It was a pitiful old joke, but it was the best I could do, coming out of a restless sleep.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  “The usual. Facing down juvenile delinquents armed with switchblades.”

  “Must have been a long drawn-out fight.” She kept her voice light, assuming I’d been joking. “We haven’t talked in a few days.”

  “I knew you were running twelve-hour shifts.” Me, making the apology for her so that it wouldn’t put her in a position of making excuses. A few months earlier, we’d spent a half hour a day on the telephone. Lately, the phone calls had been a day or two apart. I got her answering machine more often than I reached her. I even wondered if she’d met someone else. So I retreated, the defense I’d used all my life.

  She laughed, keeping her voice in that same light tone. “Sorry. We’ve been short-staffed.”

  “I know.” I sat in bed and stretched. “So how’s—” I stopped, because she’d begun talking at the same time, with the same question.

  “—the weather?” we each finished.

  “I’ve got a few days off coming up,” she said.

  “Lucky you. I know you need the break. More kayaking on the lake?”

  I’d invited her to visit a couple of times already, and each time she’d had an excuse to decline. Good reasons. But I didn’t want her to know how anxious I was to see her again. And I was afraid the next reason she gave me might be poor enough that I’d have to acknowledge her interest in me was less intense than I hoped.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “It’s so crowded with boaters that things on the water have been a little crazy. I have a four-day stretch away from the hospital, almost like a vacation. I’d hate to waste it dodging Budweiser maniacs on Jet Skis.”

  Was she hinting at a visit to Charleston? My pride didn’t allow me to ask. Because if she refused yet again . . .

  “I’ve been thinking of kayaking around here,” I said, steering the conversation away from her time off work. “Great thing is, doesn’t matter if you have one leg or two.”

  “Take it seriously enough,” she said, “and you’d get pretty good at it. How many other sports could you compete against the other athletes at an equal level, huh?”

  There it was. The roller coaster of my emotions. I clung to every word she spoke on the phone. Wanting our calls to be longer. Yet, a few weeks earlier she’d asked if I ever intended to pursue a Ph.D. in astronomy. Which I’d silently interpreted as a question about my ambition in life. Here, despite the surface of that statement about kayaking—or so
I interpreted—she was once again exhorting me to be more ambitious. Go into the world and compete. Or was my subconscious working hard to generate resentment as a way to console myself in case she’d lost real interest in our relationship?

  “Hey,” I said, wanting another subject change, “let me tell you about my trip to the emergency room yesterday.”

  “Nick!” Real concern. Which lifted me again. I pictured her as she’d been during our walks here in Charleston. Her soft hair blowing against my face as she leaned into me in the park along the river.

  “Nothing like that.” I described Angel and all the events, minus the meeting with Bingo in the parking lot.

  “She sounds interesting, this Angel.”

  “I get the sense she’s very, very sharp,” I said. “She knows what she wants and figures out the best way to get it.”

  “Aren’t you concerned about her living by herself? Shouldn’t you get someone to check on her?”

  I grinned. “The doctor in you goes straight to the problem, doesn’t it?”

  Before she could reply, there was a knock on my door.

  “Hang on,” I said. “Room service just arrived.”

  I threw on a robe to sign for my coffee and bagels and newspaper, as ordered the night before. It was lazy, very lazy. But since I expected my half brother to pay for it once he lost the court case and had to cover my legal expenses, I didn’t mind the luxury.

  Instead of returning to my bed where I’d answered the phone, I sat on the couch and picked up the extension. I took a small gulp of coffee. “Where were we?” I asked. “Right. Sending someone to check on Angel. I don’t think I need to. Seems everything is fine. The doctors are looking after her sister. Her grandmother is coming back. And she gets help from the neighbors.”

  “Nick, she’s a twelve-year-old. On her own. I know that part of town.”

  Like me, Amelia had been raised south of Broad. Like me, she’d fled Charleston. Except she had not returned.

  “Well . . .”

  “Honestly, Nick.” It was an admonishment. “I don’t care if her grandmother’s flying back this afternoon on the Concorde. What kind of family situation is that when the grandmother is willing to leave in the first place?”

  “Well . . .”

  “I hope you do something about it. Find the social services people. Let them know. They’ll step in.”

  “Good idea,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue.

  “By the sound of your voice, you’re not going to.” So Amelia did want to argue.

  “People live their lives. I can’t just step in and—”

  “That’s right,” she said. “You have your precious little world, and you don’t want anyone to enter.”

  Where had that come from?

  “Well . . .”

  “Look,” she said. “Got to go. Call me when you have time.

  I know it’s busy there, what with the archives and your equally precious time with Glennifer and Elaine.”

  But she didn’t hang up.

  I started laughing. With relief, hoping I understood correctly her sudden shift of mood. “Please tell me,” I said, “that you’re as worried about me liking you as I am about you liking me.”

  “Well . . .” The defensiveness had left her voice. “You haven’t asked lately for me to come visit, and now when I told you I had four days off . . .”

  Maybe she and I shared the same roller coaster. Which would be wonderful. Maybe her roller coaster was the reason for the vague unease I couldn’t shake.

  “Amelia,” I said, “Since you have four days off and since Charleston has an airport what would you think about—”

  “Hang on,” she said. “Stupid pager.” Ten seconds later, she was on the phone again. “Nick, I am so sorry. Emergency back at the hospital.”

  “No problem,” I said. A familiar ache filled me. “I understand. Call me when you can.”

  This time, she did hang up.

  I set the phone down. I opened the drapes of the hotel room. I watched the sky get brighter as I drank my coffee. I read the newspaper. Twice.

  When the coffee was gone, I showered, dressed in a suit and tie, and left the hotel room.

  **

  In my childhood I’d been to many Sunday services. Based on that, I guessed this service was nearing its end. A one-hour sermon had been preached on carrying the burden of the cross of Jesus. Followed by a half-hour prayer that had just finished. Next would come the passing of the collection plate. Then a final hymn.

  Instead, Isaiah Sullivan stepped out from behind the pulpit, armed with neither Bible nor hymnal.

  “Last night, the voice of the Lord came to me and said we have a sinner in our midst.” He spoke in a quiet voice that verged on sadness. “And by his command, I have no choice but to call this sinner forth to confess before God and man.”

  He stopped and let a heavy tension fall upon his congregation. Despite his quiet voice, Shepherd Isaiah was an imposing old-style preacher. He was rawboned and big, with a thatch of hair that was unnaturally dark compared to the wrinkles around his eyes. He had a square head and wore a beard that made him look vaguely like photos of Abraham Lincoln. I decided he was in his midthirties, but definitely not softening as middle age approached. He had removed his black jacket during the passion of his sermon. The sleeves of his starched white shirt were rolled up to his elbows, showing corded muscle and a tattoo that I couldn’t see clearly enough from where I sat to make out any details.

  “This sinner . . .” he continued gently, “. . . this sinner has been seen in discourse with an unmarried man not her husband. Among the heathens. And this woman partook in the evils of alcohol. Were it not for the arrival of her husband to save her from the fires of hell, God only knows how much further she would have willingly gone with Satan.”

  I was impressed at the sincerity of his sorrow.

  “It is with pain that I call her forth,” he continued. “Betty Crenshaw. A jezebel who must be punished now. In front of her husband. In front of this congregation. And in front of God himself.”

  “No!” came a cry in the silence that followed. A burly, bearded man had risen, taking his much smaller wife by the arm.

  “No!” She cried again, trying to pull away from her husband.

  “I wish it could be any other way,” came the voice from the pulpit. Suddenly his voice rose as if directing holy anger at an unseen opponent. “Yet Satan must be banished! This very morning!”

  The man with the heavy black beard pulled his wife up the aisle toward the pulpit. She struggled against him, her feet sliding uselessly along the waxed wooden floor, as if she were a child being dragged firmly by her father.

  And as the man and wife approached the steps leading to the pulpit, a giant of a man rose from the front pew. It brought from the congregation the merest of sounds, as if each member had drawn in a quick breath.

  This giant man, I would learn later, was Elder Jeremiah. The preacher’s blood brother. Holding a small wooden paddle in his right hand.

  “Let the Holy Chastisement begin!” Shepherd Isaiah called out to the congregation. “Let our Lord be served!”

  **

  My first steps to belief in a God behind this universe began through my background as an astronomer.

  This might surprise those who think that science is “truth” and God is “faith.” A hundred years ago, yes, it did look like our universe had no place for God. But quantum physics succeeded in replacing much of the cherished truths of classic nuclear physics and in bringing new mysteries: light was both a particle and wave; matter could flicker in and out of existence. Experimental work on Einstein’s theories brought as many questions as answers. And in the last century, mainstream biologists began to see major flaws in the predictions of Darwin.

  Just past the middle of the twentieth century, astronomy brought to science the first hint of a staggering concept: the universe had a beginning. Much as atheist astronomers tried to prove otherwise, evidence acc
umulated until it was nearly impossible to deny the big bang theory. With that, the Genesis view of a universe suddenly had substance—science and Genesis agreed there was a day before which time did not exist, this universe was created from a point of nothingness, and the direction of the growth of the universe had been predetermined by something outside the law of nature.

  Then came something more astounding, given that the foundation of science for the previous five hundred years had been built on the notion that this was a naturalistic universe, that all events could be explained by previous events, that our existence on this planet resulted from chance. Some astronomers and physicists began to examine in whole all the inarguable scientific data that related to the constants in physics—gravity, weak nuclear forces, strong nuclear forces, electromagnetism—that were necessary for the creation of life. They discovered that if any one of these and others of the dozens upon dozens of necessary constants in this universe were changed by a fraction of a fraction, Earth and life upon it would not exist.

  The mathematical odds of this happening by chance, these scientists knew, were roughly similar to someone winning the lottery each week for fifty weeks in a row. The science of mathematics says that if the probability is less than one in ten followed by fifty zeroes, it is essentially impossible or beyond reason. Like winning the lottery that many consecutive times. Common sense also tells us at this point there is no other conclusion that to win in such a way, the lottery must be rigged. So, too, this universe.

  Rigged. Beyond reason to expect that all of the astonishing coincidences in physics factors would be as they are.

  Because of this, some respected scientists were willing to argue and theorize that the mathematical probability for the universe to exist in a way that makes life possible cannot be reasonably expected to be accounted for by randomness. Some scientists were willing to go further and argue that data shows that the end goal of the universe is exactly the same goal as claimed in Genesis: to produce human life. In effect, after five hundred years of denying a creator, twenty-first-century science was opening the door to the existence of God again.