Covenant

by Brandon Massey

  Especially on a day such as that one.

  Lisa sipped her iced tea. “How’re things going?”

  “I haven’t written a word all morning, I forgot to shave, and I’ve got a killer headache. But I’m glad to see you.”

  She reached across the table and took his hand. Her touch was warm.

  “If you want, I can leave the office early,” she said. Her voice lowered, and a seductive glint came into her eyes. “Keep you company . . . and make wild, passionate love to you.”

  “Now that’s a tempting offer.”

  “But?”

  “After lunch I was planning to visit the gravesite.”

  “Of course.” She squeezed his hand. “Want me to come with?”

  “You don’t want to come, Lisa. I’ll be in an even worse mood than I’m in now.”

  The waiter stopped by the table. He was a tall twenty-something with reddish hair and wrists as thin as bamboo sticks. Anthony knew instantly from the man’s effeminate demeanor that he had a dash of sugar in his tank, as his mother would have called it; Midtown was known for its large population of gays and lesbians.

  Anthony ordered a pint of dunkles, one of the house lagers. Lisa regarded him with a cocked eyebrow.

  He shrugged. “What the hell, I’m off the clock for the rest of the day.”

  “You’ve still got plenty of time to finish the book. It’s due when? November?”

  “End of October.”

  “I’m looking forward to reading it.”

  He grunted. “I’m looking forward to finishing it.”

  His work-in-progress was his fifth novel, the latest installment in a crime series. He had been writing crime stories since he was fifteen, and with the exception of poems, reports, and essays for high school English classes, had never written anything else. Although he’d once entertained fantasies of becoming a sports writer like his dad, the prospect of chronicling athletes paid outrageous sums of money to play games was about as appealing to him as working as a clown in a traveling circus.

  Crime writing was different. Although fiction, it was relevant to him in a way that sports journalism would never be, more relevant to him than his readers—and there were, surprisingly, legions of them—would ever realize.

  The waiter delivered his beer. Anthony took a sip of the light, smooth brew and requested a minute to skim the menu.

  “Have you talked to Danielle today?” Lisa asked.

  “I called her cell and left a message. She hasn’t called me back. Big surprise.”

  “Right.” Lisa rolled her eyes. “Are you going to visit the site without her then?”

  “Looks like it.” He dropped the menu on the table. “Anyway, let’s talk about something else. How’s your day been doing?”

  “My day’s been great so far. I could tell you about the intellectual property rights contract I drew up on this morning, but that would bore you to tears.”

  Lisa worked as general counsel at a technology consulting company in Buckhead, writing contracts and handling other legal matters. When she’d graduated from Emory law school several years ago, she’d joined one of Atlanta’s top firms as an associate, but had tired of seventy-hour work weeks and the all-consuming need to generate billable hours. Being general counsel position offered her a chance to work an eight-hour-day, without the stresses of a pressure-cooker law firm environment.

  “But I’ve got some good news,” she said.

  “I could use some of that. They’re giving you a raise?”

  “Nope. Lauren’s pregnant!”

  Lisa was the eldest of three sisters. Lauren was the middle girl. She and her husband had been trying to start a family for a while.

  He knew where this conversation was headed, but he said only, “Really? Wow, that’s great news. You’re going to be an auntie. Congrats.”

  “It’s exciting.” She folded her arms on the table, leaned in closer. “Being an auntie will be fun, but I’d love to be a mother.”

  “I’d love to order lunch.” He made an exaggerated display of studying the menu. “I think I’m going to order a burger. How about you?”

  “Ha, ha, you’re such a comedian. I didn’t know I’d married Eddie Murphy.”

  “You didn’t. Eddie Murphy has kids—lots of them. I don’t want any kids.”

  “Come on, you would make such beautiful babies. I bet they’d have your eyes, your honey-brown complexion, your cute dimples.”

  “My brooding demeanor.”

  “You aren’t a brooder. You talk to me.”

  “My cynicism.”

  She smiled a little. “Well . . . .”

  The waiter returned. Anthony asked for the mushroom Swiss burger and garlic fries, and Lisa ordered a chicken Caesar salad.

  After the server departed, Lisa turned a questioning look on him. Inwardly, he groaned. She wasn’t ready to let this go yet.

  He said, “All right, listen, when we first started dating, what did I say when you asked me if I wanted to have kids? Didn’t I say I don’t want kids?”

  “That was four years ago, Tony, and we weren’t married then.”

  “I’m supposed to have changed my mind since we’ve been married?”

  “You should consider it.”

  “You’re something else.” He shook his head. “Why do women always think they can change a man?”

  “Because men hardly ever know what they want. You need a woman to clarify things.”

  She was smiling, and she was so lovely that he had to smile, too. They’d probably had this same conversation a thousand times, with neither of them giving in, and though they always kept the tone humorous, he knew she was absolutely determined to change his mind.

  What she needed to accept was that he had inherited his dad’s I’ll Show You gene—in this case, showing her that she could not, and would not, change his stance, and if that he some day decided he wanted to be a father, it would be because he had reached that decision on his own, not because she had worn him down.

  But when Lisa wanted something, she could be like a force of Nature, and there was nothing she wanted more than children. In her mind, that was what couples did: they met, married, had children, and lived happily ever after. She was the product of a two-parent household, one of those families so harmonious it seemed surreal, and though her ignorance of what a dysfunctional family was like sometimes frustrated him, he knew that the stable home from which she came was part of what had drawn him to her. She helped him remember how things had used to be in his own life.

  “I’ve learned to never say never,” he said. “But honestly, what’s the rush? We should just enjoy each other, do some more traveling. I’m only thirty, you’re only thirty-two.”

  “Only thirty-two? My eggs have an expiration date on them, baby, and it’s not too far off.”

  “I read a story on the Web the other day about a sixty-year-old woman who gave birth—to triplets.”

  “Please. I don’t want to be carrying a child at sixty, and you sure as hell don’t want to be a first-time father at fifty-eight.”

  He laughed. “With my back? I know that’s right.”

  “All jokes aside, we need to think about it, Tony.”

  “Can we have this conversation some other time?”

  “Okay, but we will have it.”

  And I’ll say the same thing, he thought.

  For the rest of lunch, they talked about office gossip, publishing industry rumors, family drama, and possible weekend plans. After he paid the bill, he walked her to her car, a white BMW 5-series sedan.

  “I’ll see you this evening, sweet stuff.” She slipped into his arms and brazenly palmed his butt. “We’ve got married folks’ business to attend to tonight.”

  “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

  She swatted his rear end. “Call me if you need anything. I love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  They kissed, and she got in her car and pulled out
of the parking lot.

  In her absence, he once again became aware of his headache. It had retreated during lunch, but as he stood there alone it came back in a furious rush, pounding behind his eyes.

  He unlocked the door to the Tahoe. Pent-up waves of heat steamed out. He stepped back to allow the air to escape, and stopped when he noticed the steering wheel.

  Someone had affixed an envelope to the center. The envelope was white, business size. His first and last name was typed on the front in black text.

  What was this? Had someone been inside his car?

  He looked around, saw no one suspicious, and leaned inside the truck. He peeled the envelope off the wheel. A dime-size wad of a gum had been used to apply it to the surface.

  The envelope was sealed. He tore it open and found a tri-folded sheet of ordinary white copy paper.

  The message had been typed:

  Do you want to know what happened to your father?

  Read Psalm 37:32.

  To learn the truth, be online today @ 18:00.

  Until then,

  A Friend

  P.S. You must keep this secret. They are everywhere.

  2

  Outside the SUV, the air around Anthony had turned as thick as syrup. It jelled in his lungs, made it difficult to breathe. He examined the letter again. Who had left this for him? Was this for real?

  He looked back and forth across the parking lot, and to the street beyond, and saw nothing of interest. People were going about their business. No one paid attention to him.

  And how had the letter-writer gotten into his truck? He always locked the doors.

  He looked inside the truck again. An object dangled from the short beam that supported the rearview mirror: a canary-yellow fishing lure, crafted in the shape of a minnow.

  It was the exact same kind that he and his father had used on their last fishing trip.

  His knees turned rubbery. He slumped onto the driver’s seat, dragged the door shut.

  The heat inside was smothering. He inserted the key in the ignition—his hand trembled so badly it took four tries to fit it into the slot—and twisted. The engine rumbled, the air conditioner blasting into life.

  He fumbled open the glove box and withdrew the Beretta M9 stored inside, and a magazine of ammo. He slammed the magazine into the pistol—it took an uncharacteristic two taps to get it into the well—racked the slide, and gripped the gun in his lap with both hands.

  Better, that was better.

  Angling the muzzle toward the floor, he surveyed the parking lot again. But again, no one was watching him. The messenger, whoever it was, was gone.

  His galloping heartbeat finally slowed. He placed the gun in close reach on the passenger seat.

  In his haste to arm himself, the letter had slid onto the floor. He picked it up.

  Read Psalm 37:32.

  Up until the time he was fifteen, his family had used to attend church every Sunday. He hadn’t cracked open a Bible since those days, so not surprisingly, didn’t have one on hand. But he had his iPhone. He unclipped the handheld from his belt holster and keyed in commands with his thumbs to access the Web browser.

  He found a Web site that housed the entire text of the Old and New Testaments. He pulled up the book of Psalm, thirty-seventh chapter, and read the thirty-second verse on the small color display.

  The wicked watcheth the righteous, and seeketh to slay him.

  Something that felt like an electrical charge leaped through his heart.

  “What the hell is this?” he said.

  The wicked watcheth the righteous . . .

  According to the cops, the high-velocity bullet that had torn into his father’s heart, killing him in less than a minute, had been due to a hunting accident. Some Einstein stalking deer or quail had erroneously loosed a shot across the lake that happened to smack into his father’s chest. No one had ever stepped forward to claim responsibility, and the case was summarily closed.

  Anthony thought the hunting accident story was about as plausible as the idea that Tupac Shakur was still alive.

  He remembered what he had seen: the shadowy figure running through the trees, like someone fleeing the scene of a crime. It hadn’t been a hunter.

  It had been a sniper.

  Old grief surfaced in his throat like stomach acid, stung the back of his mouth. He swallowed thickly, wiped cold sweat away from his brow.

  The police had dismissed his eyewitness account as the overheated imaginings of a shell-shocked kid; his testimony wasn’t even included in the official record of the case. The investigation was concluded so quickly it was as if someone behind the scenes with a helluva lot of pull had engineered a swift resolution.

  The wicked watcheth . . .

  As farfetched as it seemed when remembering the ordinary, family-oriented man his father had been, Anthony believed that his dad was murdered because of something he knew, or had done. His dad had acted so damn strangely that morning, had been ruminating on some troubling matter that he wouldn’t talk about, and Anthony clearly recalled his father’s puzzling statement that, “they’re serious about keeping their promise to make things tough for you if you cross the line . . .”

  Who had Dad been talking about? What line had he crossed?

  Questioning his mom about what Dad might have meant hadn’t helped at all. Blitzed with grief, she’d forever refused to talk about Dad’s death.

  He read the note again. As much as he wanted to believe that this person could lead him to the truth, experience suggested that this letter could be a hoax.

  That past March, Anthony had been featured in a piece in The New York Times about bestselling crime novelists. The writer of the article had dug into Anthony’s background, learned of his father’s death, and asked him about it. Anthony had unloaded on him, frankly expressing his doubts in the hunting accident story and declaring that, some day, he would see to it that the guilty party would be brought to justice.

  In the days after the story ran, he was deluged him with dozens of e-mails from people claiming to have knowledge of the case. A couple of crackpots even confessed to the killing and begged for his forgiveness.

  On the advice of his attorney, he forwarded the messages to a private investigator. The investigator conducted research, and discovered that none of the claims and tips was valid. Not one.

  This letter might be just another waste of time. The initial flood of messages had stopped a week or so after the news story’s publication, but every now and then, some nut case stumbled across the article online and sent him a rambling, ridiculous message.

  But two things about this one were different. For one, none of the bogus people had ever been bold enough to break into his car and leave a letter.

  He plucked the fishing lure off the rearview mirror.

  And how could they know about the lure? How could they have known this was the same kind they’d been using that morning when he’d landed that prize bass? That detail wasn’t in the news stories that reported the “accident,” wasn’t in the official police records.

  “Just another crackpot, Tony,” he said, in a shaky voice.

  Hope was dangerous. Hope led to disillusionment, crushed dreams. He had a great life with Lisa, an island of quiet happiness they’d built for themselves, and if he started nurturing hope on this thing, he was setting himself up for heartache, he was going to reopen some painful old wounds, and he didn’t know if he could handle any more.

  He weighed the letter and the lure in his hands. There was a trash can on the other side of the parking lot.

  On impulse, he got out of the truck and marched to the garbage can. Poised at the edge of the basket, he hesitated. Read the letter again.

  To learn the truth, be online today @ 18:00.

  It was as if the messenger realized the depths of his cynicism and doubt, and understood the only way to reel him in deeper was to tempt him with another clue.

  In spite of himself, it was working.

 
; “Man, you’re a sucker, you know that?” he muttered.

  He turned away from the trash and got in his truck.

  He was probably going to regret falling for what was almost certainly a cruel prank. But the thing about hope was that it never quite faded away.

  3

  Anthony’s younger sister sometimes went with him on his visits to their parents’ gravesites. Unable to reach her on her cell and not getting an answer on the house’s landline, he dropped by the family home in Decatur.

  In spite of the cryptic message, he had every intention to pay his respects at his parents’ graves. Nothing mattered more than duty to family. Yet as he drove, he continuously scanned the rearview mirror, alert for a tail, finding none.

  Maybe the messenger had decided to leave him be until that evening’s online meeting.

  The family house was a brick Colonial with red and beige trim, framed by live oaks and sugar maples. The neighborhood was solidly middle-class, which meant the streets were quiet at two o’clock on a Friday afternoon, excerpt for clusters of loitering teenagers on summer vacation.

  As he pulled into the driveway, he frowned. Since his last visit a few weeks ago, the grass had grown almost knee-high, and the gardenia bushes along the front needed to be trimmed. Trash spilled out of the garbage bin beside the garage. Soggy newspapers cluttered the walkway leading to the door like a trail of breadcrumbs.

  When Mom had died of heart failure five years ago, she’d left the house to him and Danielle. Long before their mother had passed, though, Danielle had been living there with her son, Reuben, so they simply stayed. The agreement was that Anthony would pay the basic utilities and annual property tax bills, and his sister would take care of the maintenance.

  He wasn’t surprised to discover that she was failing to hold up her end of the deal.

  Danielle usually parked her car—a Ford Explorer he had purchased for her last year—in front of the attached garage. The vehicle was gone, but that didn’t mean anything. She could have handed the keys to one of her boyfriends, which she often did, in spite of his disapproval.