City of Heretics

by Heath Lowrance

  Cole drank and said, “What do you think, Crowe? Look at the victims you’re familiar with. One of them the wife of our fair city’s most notorious gangster, the other the daughter of a modestly prosperous engineer, church alderman, and All-American.”

  “I don’t know anything about Patricia Welling’s family.”

  “Nothing to know. The Wellings are about as ‘average citizen’ as you can get without morphing into parody. Active in their little community in Bartlett, well-respected as the guy in the Kinks song. It was little Patricia that was trouble, like I said. No one wants to talk about it now, but she was sort of an embarrassment. Running the streets, taking off from home, doing drugs. My colleagues in the media want to whitewash all that now—and I don’t blame them, mind you—but before she died Patricia caused nothing but trouble for her parents.”

  Crowe drummed his fingers on the scarred wooden table and took a drink. Cole watched him, apparently amused at his efforts. Chuckling, she said, “Don’t tell me, Crowe. Dead end already? What is it you’re trying to do anyway? Track down Peter Murke and bring him back to justice?”

  “Where was Murke living when they arrested him?”

  “Oh, great idea. What you should do, Crowe, is go over to Murke’s house and look around. You know, for clues. Because you’re certain to find something the cops missed.”

  “Just tell me, Cole.”

  She told him—an address off Martin Luther King.

  “Good luck with that, Crowe,” she said when he started to slide out of the booth. “And thanks for the drinks.”

  He nodded, tossed a few bills on the table. She watched him with bemused interest as he buttoned up his coat. When he was about to walk away, she said, “Say. There is one thing you may want to look into. One thing that’s kinda weird. I mean, it probably won’t amount to anything, and I’m sure the cops have already examined it, but it’s something.”

  He looked at her, waiting, and she said, “The Wellings are members of an exclusive little church social thing. In fact, Fletcher Welling, Patricia’s pa, is sort of the… chairman, I reckon. The Society of Christ the Fisher, they call themselves, you know, after the idea of Jesus as a fisher of men’s souls? Sort of a Christian charity group, except very limited membership. Really secretive about their membership roster, but always doing benign things like raising money for kids with cancer or organizing canned food drives or care packages for our boys in Iraq. That sort of thing.”

  “A charitable Christian group, Cole? Thanks for the hot lead.”

  She laughed. “That’s the kind of folks you’re dealing with, Crowe. Not my fault. When Patricia got killed, I was gonna scoot down to Holly Springs and talk to this writer guy I know, sort of an American theological historian, name of Arley Hampton. When I say he’s a theological historian, what I really mean is that he’s a nutcase. He knows his stuff, but he’s got this idea that the history of the world, the history of religious movements especially, is the history of a vast conspiracy to… I don’t know, shackle humanity or something. Subjugate us all. You know the type, right?”

  “Yeah, and I know who he is. He wrote a novel, didn’t he? Back in the early ‘70’s, I think.”

  “Late ‘60’s. All the Flesh, it was called. Real cult item. One print run, goes for a fortune on EBay. You read it?”

  “No, but I heard of him.”

  “Any case, he said he would give me the lowdown on the Society. Had plans to visit him again, but my editor put the ki-bosh on it.”

  “Why?”

  “Said I was wasting the paper’s money. Said the story didn’t have shit to do with some innocuous little church group. But I don’t know. I still think, if I’d been able to talk to him, he might’ve given me some insight into things.”

  “Maybe you should’ve done it anyway, on your own dime.”

  “To hell with that. I’m not that curious about anything anymore. I was relieved, if you want to know the truth.” She looked at the table and drank, and he knew she was lying. She was still curious, but she didn’t want to be.

  She told him where he could find Arley Hampton, if he wanted to, and he left her there with her third drink, and headed back out into the icy cold afternoon.

  At a pay phone at the corner of Beale and Second Street, he called Vitower’s home number. His man answered, and kept Crowe waiting with the bitter cold seeping into his bones while he went and fetched. The cold didn’t do anything to help Crowe’s wounds. His shoulder was getting stiff and painful again, and the hole in his back screamed at him. He put the receiver down long enough to toss a couple of pain pills down his throat, and picked it up again just in time to hear Vitower say, “Crowe? That you? Where the fuck are you, you piece of shit?”

  Crowe told him he was on the job, and the voice that came back over the phone lines sounded like a vengeful ghost. “Good,” he said. “We’ll get that bastard. You need anything? Money?”

  “I’m set on funds, but I need a car. This taxi-cab shit is getting old.”

  “Where you at?”

  He told him, and Vitower said, “Right. Hang tight there, and I’ll have someone bring some wheels around. What else?”

  “Make sure the car’s nothing too flashy. And I could use a cell phone.”

  “You sure you don’t want a smart phone instead?”

  “A what? What the hell is a smart phone?”

  “Never mind, you been in the joint too long. I’ll get you a cell phone.”

  “ And a gun.”

  “A gun? You get busted with a gun, Crowe, you’re no good to me.”

  “Me having a gun didn’t bother you the other day.”

  “That was before everything went south.”

  “I need a gun. Just let me worry about getting busted. Oh, and one other thing. I could really use some tools of the trade.”

  “Such as?”

  Crowe told him, and Vitower said, “What the hell, Crowe? You planning on some kind of crime spree?”

  “I have a lock pick,” Crowe said. “But the electronic device would make my life a lot easier.”

  “Well, I live to serve,” Vitower said. “You get this motherfucker, Crowe, you hear me? I’m not fucking around here.” And he hung up.

  Crowe found a doorway and huddled there with his coat collar up and his hands shoved in his pockets. The few tourists who decided to brave the weather to soak up some patented Memphis atmosphere gazed at him warily as they passed, making room on the sidewalk in case he leapt out at them.

  Forty minutes later, a dark green Jaguar XJS yanked up to the curb and a lanky black guy in a bulky parka stepped out. He said, “You Crowe?”

  Crowe nodded and the handed over the keys. “Mr. Vitower said you’d drop me back off on Mud Island,” he said.

  “Did he?”

  He got in the Jag. Nothing too flashy, he’d said. He wondered what Vitower considered flashy if the Jag was his idea of low-key.

  Vitower’s man waited at the passenger door for Crowe to unlock it. A cardboard box rested on the passenger seat. Inside was a sleek little cell phone, a slightly battered electronic lock pick, and a slim hard plastic case. He opened the case. A .45 caliber Colt revolver nestled there next to two boxes of ammunition. That made him happy. Vitower remembered that he preferred revolvers. There was a hastily-scrawled message on a post-it note in the case that read Try not to leave it on the side of the road this time.

  He turned on the cell phone and it chimed cheerfully. He shoved it in his pocket, started the car, and pulled away from the curb. The delivery guy stood on the corner and watched him go, looking dazed and hurt.

  Every window in the place was shattered, and glass was strewn all over the bare floorboards. The wind outside whistled through every opening, but there was nothing left in Peter Murke’s house to be disturbed by it.

  It was a simple, one story home, small enough to feel claustrophobic even without furniture or any signs that anyone ever lived there. Five long strides would take you from one end o
f the place to the other. Except for near the windows, a thick layer of dust covered the floors, and water stains marred the bare walls. Shadows pooled in every corner where the dim gray light couldn’t touch them.

  Crowe moved through the house slowly. He wasn’t really looking for anything. Nothing tangible, anyway.

  In the kitchen, the appliances had been ripped right out, and the empty spaces yawned with exposed plumbing coated with dried sludge. The linoleum had rotted almost completely away, exposed to rain and foul weather through a gaping window.

  A small bathroom with nothing but a shattered toilet and a shower stall was just off the kitchen. A dead possum rotted patiently in the stall.

  There was no bedroom. He assumed the front room of the house served as bedroom and living room for Murke. On the east wall, someone had spray painted in red MURKE U SYKO FUKK U ROTT IN HELL. On the north wall, in a different hand and partially obscured by water stains, the word HERETIC was written with green magic marker. It was written in neat block letters.

  And that was all that existed of him now, in this place. Everything else had been stripped away.

  Crowe stood in the middle of the house for a long time, listening to the wind outside and thinking. He thought of the Ghost Cat. He tried to think of Patricia Welling, and Jezzie Vitower, and whoever else Murke had killed, but his thoughts kept coming back to the Ghost Cat.

  Heretic, it said. Syko Fukk. Two different times, two different people, two different definitions of one man. The ‘Syko Fukk’ definition was obvious, once you got past the illiteracy factor, but the ‘Heretic’ thing… A very religious word, heretic. It made Crowe think of what Cole had said about the impression of religious reverence she’d gotten from seeing Patricia Welling’s body.

  And the darkly holy fear he had woken with after his nightmare about the Ghost Cat.

  So. Nothing tangible, right. But something stirred in this house, some deep-seated fear, residual emotion. From Murke? From his victims?

  He needed to meet this Arley Hampton guy.

  He left the shell of Peter Murke’s house, got in the Jag, and drove away.

  On Highway 78 he headed south, leaving Memphis behind. It felt good to do that. He hadn’t been back two weeks and already he hated it. He crossed the state line into Mississippi, kept going past Holly Springs and Cuba Landing. By nightfall he was just north of Oxford. At ten, he stopped off at a roadside motel.

  Sleep didn’t come easily, and when it did it was fitful and unsatisfying. He half-dreamed about Dallas. It was probably the fact of being in a motel room, just like that night almost eight years ago, or it could have been the persistent pain. He got up twice to swallow a couple of pain pills.

  The next morning he changed out his bandages again, using a smaller one on his face. It still covered his left eye, but at least it didn’t rub against his jaw. He snagged a cup of coffee and a bagel from the front office and headed out.

  Hampton lived just south of Oxford, in a small but tidy one-story house situated on what used to be farmland. Crowe got there just before ten-thirty. An enormous oak tree, about fifty feet tall, dominated the front yard. It fronted a dirt road, with unused fields along one side and thick woods along the other.

  Crowe stopped the car halfway up the gravel driveway and got out. It was beautifully quiet. The sky looked metallic blue above, cloudless and cold. There was no wind. He walked up to the house, deliberately kicking gravel, clearing his throat, trying to make noise. Didn’t want the crazy writer guy to think he was sneaking up on him.

  Stepping up on the narrow porch, he saw a curtain flutter in the window to his right, and a dark shape moving behind it. He rapped on the door, said, “Mr. Hampton.”

  There were footsteps inside, a chair leg or something scraping along a wood floor. Then a gruff voice, “Yeah?”

  “My name’s Crowe,” he said. “You mind if I talk to you?”

  “’Bout what?”

  “About God and the universe and the meaning of life.”

  “That’s sort of a broad topic, mister.”

  “Well, just the meaning of life, then. How long could that take?”

  The door cracked open an inch, and a green eye peered out, topped by an impossibly bushy blond eyebrow. “I don’t have time for fucking around, son. I’m a busy man.”

  “I know. I won’t keep you long. I want to ask you about the history of… evangelical movements.”

  “Again, that’s a goddamn broad topic.”

  “The Society of Christ the Fisher.”

  The eye went wide, then squinty. “Who are you?” he said.

  Crowe told him his name again. “Lori Cole, from the Memphis Clarion, said you were the man to talk to.”

  “Cole, eh? Yeah, I remember her. Was supposed to come by, what? Two goddamn years ago.”

  “She got held up.”

  Hampton said, “Let me see your stomach.”

  “What?”

  “Your stomach. Lift up your shirt and let me see.”

  Crowe frowned, unbuttoned his jacket and pulled up his shirt. Hampton squinted through the door at his belly button for a long moment, and then the door opened, and a small bony man with thick white hair streaked with blond stood there in nothing but his underwear. He had a sort of caved-in chest with random strands of white hair, and his belly was small and round. He looked like he’d been on a bender for the last ten years. Even from the porch, Crowe could smell the unwashed booze sweat.

  Tucking his shirt back in, Crowe said, “Why did you want to see my stomach?”

  He ignored the question. “Crowe, you said? I can give you a little time, but not much. I’m working.”

  He ushered him in. As ragged as Hampton was, his home was tidy, aside from the books everywhere—they were stacked up in wobbly towers all over the place, flowing off bookshelves and chairs and tables. Some of the stacks nearly touched the ceiling. None of them were on the floor, though; that was swept and clean, the wood worn by long years of traffic.

  “You, uh… you want a drink or something?” he said uneasily. He clearly wasn’t used to company.

  Crowe glanced at the pink neon clock on the far wall, above a battered desk and computer. It wasn’t quite ten-thirty yet. He said, “No, thanks. Coffee, maybe.”

  “Coffee, right,” Hampton said. “Offering a man a drink, and here it’s not even noon. Stupid.” He went into the kitchen and Crowe followed him, careful not to bump into any of the stacks of books.

  In the kitchen, there were no books, not even a magazine. After going through the living room, it seemed strangely stripped down and bare. An empty whisky bottle sat on the table next to an empty glass. There were several more empty bottles on the floor next to the table.

  Hampton pulled a tin of coffee out of the cabinet and started brewing up a pot in a small coffee maker.

  While it brewed, he leaned against the counter and said , “So, you, uh… you’re writing a piece on the Society?”

  “Yeah.”

  He nodded doubtfully. “What happened to your face? Did they do that?”

  “Yeah,” Crowe said again.

  “You’re writing about them, and they did something to your face. Because you’re writing about them?”

  Crowe sighed. Hampton wasn’t buying it. “I’m not writing about them,” he said. “I’m just curious about them. I have my own reasons.”

  “Right. Well, I’ll tell you, Mr. Crowe, I’m glad you came clean about that. You know what Ernest Hemingway said?”

  “He said a lot of things.”

  “He said that a writer has to have a one-hundred-percent foolproof bullshit detector. I may not be a Hemingway, but I do have the required equipment.”

  “So it seems.”

  “So you aren’t writing about them. What about your face? That still something to do with them?”

  “No, probably not. Actually, that’s what I’m trying to find out.”

  Hampton crossed his arms. The fact that he was half-naked didn’t seem
to bother him. He said, “I wrote an article about them, you know that? Appeared in Religion & Society, April ’95. Good article, too. They, uh, they didn’t like it. Wrote a very pointed response to the editor, and you know what? That editor printed a retraction in the following issue and never returned any of my calls after that.”

  “Religious groups can be pretty persuasive.”

  He laughed a raw, phlegmy laugh. “Right, persuasive. It kinda surprised me, tell you the truth, that they cared that much. I mean, in my book I really let ‘em have it and they didn’t do shit. Course, no one read my book. And my agent dropped me shortly thereafter.”

  Crowe said, “What did you say about them that got them so worked up?”

  “All I did,” he said, looking at Crowe levelly, “was tell the truth. That’s all I ever do. It’s a lot harder than you think.”

  “Maybe you should try lying once in a while, just for a break.”

  He shook his head. “No, I’d sooner die.”

  When the coffee was ready, he found two clean cups and poured and they sat down at the table. He pushed the empty bottle and glass away, sipped his coffee and looked at Crowe with his frank green eyes. “You’re probably thinking, what a sad, washed-up old has-been, eh? Just another writer who never quite made it, killing himself with whisky, distracting himself with myriad conspiracy theories. Is that what you’re thinking?”

  “I don’t know. Is that what you are?”

  “No,” he said. “Well… yes. But there’s nothing sad or washed-up about me. They think they got me licked, but they don’t.”

  “Who? The Society?”

  He grinned tightly. “The Society of Christ the Fisher, those sons-a-bitches. The goddamn Society. A Christian charity group, right? Raising money for abused children. Spreading the gospel, curbing hunger. You know their mission statement? Dedication to Good Works, in the name of Jesus Christ, and the honoring of God in all we do. Working from various communities all over the country and the world, bringing the message of God’s Love to a world sorely in need.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Crowe said.