Ezra ripped her dress apart and tossed most of it to the side, leaving the girl with nothing more than a small piece of fabric to press against her front as she curled up on the steps.
Malachi set his legs shoulder-width apart, the whip resting at his side like a sword.
“You will leave this world, as you entered it. From this point forward, you will not be called your church-given name; instead, you will only be referred to as Amber Harrington. You have been stripped of your worldly possessions. And now you will be stripped of your demonic soul.”
He raised his whip, his face etched with fury, and thrust his arm downward. The crack of the whip bit into Amber’s back as the young girl screamed out in pain. Red marks were already visible across her back.
Feeling the end of the leather whip with his opposite hand, Malachi seemed to draw more energy. This time, he turned his shoulders, lowering his center of gravity. Just as he was about uncork another lash, a voice cried out. “Stop, I beg of you.”
Malachi’s arm halted its trajectory before the whip connected with the unprotected girl.
“Please don’t do this!”
A woman raced up the center aisle, her dress flapping against her legs as she raced by Beulah. It was Jaala/Amber’s mother, Hodiah. It was obvious she couldn’t take watching her daughter beaten like an animal.
Gasps were heard around the sanctuary as elders scrambled and Ezra looked to his leader.
“If you believe there is any goodness in this world at all, you will stop this senseless attack on my daughter,” Hodiah screamed, moving closer.
Leaning forward in the pew, Beulah gripped the side railing, her heart stuck in the back of her throat. Glancing around, the elders began to converge on the center of the front part of the sanctuary, heads still turning. Members of the crowd pointed and a few cowered in their seats. Everyone was in shock that a member of Camp Israel would brazenly challenge Malachi, especially when he was in the middle of levying discipline.
Beulah watched Malachi’s jaw clench—she’d seen it up close too many times to count. Suddenly, Jamin walked past a stunned Ezra, reaching the stairs at the same time as Hodiah.
“Please…” she cried uncontrollably, “I’ll do anything for you to stop hurting my child. Please…I beg of you.”
Hodiah threw herself forward, trying to reach her daughter. Jamin shifted toward her, and she plowed into his body. He lost his balance momentarily and almost fell onto Amber. With Ezra standing there as if he were growing roots and Malachi still clutching the whip, Jamin pushed the mother back. She tumbled backward, falling on her backside just at the feet of the people sitting in the front row. A woman reached a hand down, but her husband took hold of her wrist, scooped up his child, and quickly slid down the pew away from Hodiah.
“Will…will you help save my child from being mauled by this fucking beast?” She reached up and touched the pew, but no one moved to help her. Beulah dug her fingernails into the railing, desperate to help, but also realizing it was a lost cause. Malachi always won. That was how the entire structure of the camp was set up. There was one supreme being amongst them, or so they were told.
Hodiah’s desperate pleas didn’t end. “That’s all he is, a manipulative, disgusting rapist.” Scanning the stunned congregation further, she pulled up to her knees. “None of you will do a fucking thing. You’re no better than he is!” Her voice reverberated off the high ceiling as she jabbed a finger toward Malachi. “Well, I’m not going to sit here like an obedient dog and follow his every whim and command while my daughter is raped and beaten.” She flipped to look over her shoulder, then picked up a hymnal off the pew and charged toward Malachi as her cry pierced Beulah’s ears.
Jamin quickly pulled something out of his pocket and raised his arm.
A pistol.
The gun fired, exploding in Hodiah’s face. She crumbled downward, and what was left of her head smacked hard off the floor.
A quick moment of silence—no screaming or yelling, no gunshots. It was quickly replaced by a whimper, maybe two from the crowd.
Amber ran over and fell to her mother’s side. “Oh dear God…please don’t. Please don’t take my mother away from me,” she said, barely able to get words out.
Beulah looked down. Shiloh had covered both ears and buried her head in Beulah’s lap.
A single tear trailed down Beulah’s cheek. She wiped it away and wondered how much more she could take.
10
Pausing at the corner with a few other folks waiting for the pedestrian walk signal to turn green, I gazed across the unimpressive skyline in Hopewell—where my mother had last been seen more than thirty years earlier.
I counted five distinct smokestacks. The billows of filth towered into the atmosphere at a methodical pace, as if the polluted haze would linger for years and years.
A toddler cried in his mother’s arms, which brought my gaze back around to the street as a truck roared by, minus its muffler. Gray puffs of smoke caused an older lady to start coughing, and the toddler wailed even louder. He had snot crusted just under his nose and generally seemed to be in a crappy mood.
I was right there with him.
I was zero-for-two in the brief time I’d spent in the city that Romano had described as having “the highest violent crime rate in the state.” He went on to say that numerous companies that owned plants in the area were in litigation involving their environmental practices, which only led to more layoffs. High unemployment, high crime, and shitty water and air. Not sure why people hung around a place like this for very long, but maybe they saw hope somewhere at the horizon.
My first strikeout was at the local police department. The cop who had reached out to Romano’s father so many years ago had passed away more than a dozen years earlier, and no one else knew a thing about my mother or the cold-case investigation into her whereabouts. And they had no interest in going there, despite my overaggressive attempts to light a fire under someone, anyone wearing blue.
I looked back to the gas station half a block down on Main and shook my head—that was my second failed stop in the land of Hopewell. The manager, a fella named Tyrone with a wicked goatee, had played me. When we talked on the phone the previous evening, he said he’d worked at the station under three different companies for over three decades, and if anything noteworthy had taken place, even if he hadn’t personally witnessed it, he would know about it. I was skeptical, but hopeful. Looking back on it, too much so.
Before he would answer a single question, he insisted I fill my car with gas. After I performed that task, he then said he wasn’t allowed to answer questions by law enforcement officials unless there was a warrant, a life was in imminent danger, or he had the approval of his district manager. It took ten minutes to convince him that my mom’s life was in danger, and then when he finally relented, he had no recollection of the incident—when one of the clerks had spotted my mom and then discussed her and the man with the local cop.
I pulled out a pack of gum that Tyrone had convinced me to purchase and noticed it was already partially torn open. I walked over and threw it in the trash just as the other pedestrians got the signal to cross the intersection. Turning back around, my eyes spotted a red and gold sign on my side of the street that read Hank’s Bar. The H was blinking gold. Even though it was still midafternoon, I had nothing to lose by going inside and asking a few questions.
The place was dark with music playing from hidden speakers. It was a Prince tune, “Purple Rain.” Four men, all wearing caps, hovered over drinks at the bar; a few others were playing pool by the restroom sign. Without a noticeable window in the place, it could have been midnight and no one would have noticed.
It was Las Vegas, minus the glitz and glamour.
I found a seat on a barstool and immediately felt it wobble. I was about to stand up and change seats when…
“They’re all like that.” A woman around my age with spiked hair and a ring piercing her eyebrow flipped a napkin in fr
ont of me.
“Oh, okay,” I said, inadvertently shifting my weight and then feeling the stool teeter on two legs before the third leg clanged to the hard floor. My teeth actually rattled.
“You’ll get used to it if you stay long enough.”
That wasn’t my intention, but I kept my thoughts to myself.
“What’ll you have?” She had two arms anchored on the bar.
“Uh…” I was distracted by a painful squeal. I looked to my right, where a man wheezed as if his air passage had been almost completely restricted.
“Don’t mind Orlando. He’s down one lung and one kidney, but he just keeps doing his thing.”
I gave a slow nod as she leaned in closer. “Now it might do him some good to lay off the cigs, but he won’t listen to me, or even his wife.”
“I’ll just have an ice water if you don’t mind.”
She chuckled. “One of them, are you?” She pulled a glass off a shelf and scooped ice into it.
“It’s just a little early for me.”
“You’re new to town.” She placed the ice water on my napkin. I picked it up and took a generous gulp, then I glanced down at my outfit. Blue and white striped shirt, khakis, flats and an overcoat—every article of clothing was wrinkled. “I guess it shows, huh?”
“That and I know everyone, or at least I’ve heard of everyone.”
I took another glance around. A few eyes looked my way, and they weren’t pleasant or engaging. I hoped I had an ally here with…
“I’m Alex, by the way. And your name is…?”
“Real name is Henrietta, but they call me Hank.”
“Oh, so you’re the owner?”
“It was my dad’s place, but he passed and left me this wonderful establishment in his will. A real jewel, don’t you think?” She wasn’t joking.
“Uh, yeah. Has great potential.”
She smacked her hand on the bar and cackled. “I had you going there, Alex. I know it’s a dump, but it pays my bills, most months anyway.” A person with a prominent gold tooth asked for another beer, and Hank walked to the other corner of the L-shaped bar.
Hoping concrete data had come back on one of the elders in the church photo, I checked my phone to see if I’d missed a text or call from Brad or Nick. No such luck. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I’d sent the information to them, so it wasn’t surprising. But I felt an urgency on this case unlike any other in my career—perhaps because this had nothing to do with my career. Mom’s brief appearance in my early life had shaped whom I’d become, for better and for worse. Finding her alive would… Frankly, I couldn’t predict the feeling inside. Excitement, anxiety, maybe a little bit of resentment. Dad’s theory of her running off with a fanatical cult leader sounded more plausible with each step I took, but that still didn’t mean she was alive. And if she was, she could be in Siberia by now, not just off the James River in Virginia.
I sipped my water, thinking. Then Hank was standing in front of me again. “Just passing through town?”
“Yeah, although I’m not sure where I’m going next.”
She turned her head. “Maybe you want to make your way up to Richmond, or head for the coast?”
I pursed my lips. “Not sure. It’s complicated.”
“You look like one of those federal regulation people. Are you?”
“EPA? Uh, no.”
“One of those acronyms.”
“Well…” I debated giving her my full MO. Again, what did I have to lose? “I’m with the FBI, and I’m working a cold case.”
“Ah, that’s why you’re here. Who was murdered?”
A couple of heads turned our way. I assumed they’d overheard Hank. I swiveled in my chair so my back was to them. “No one, I hope,” I said to Hank. The eye below her pierced brow twitched ever so slightly, and I wondered what had changed.
She nodded, but then stopped talking. She picked up a bar towel and started drying glasses. Something was off. She seemed like the kind of person who could talk to a wall, and now she had clammed up.
I rummaged through my purse and pulled out the two photos that were now as important as my Glock. Well, maybe tied for second.
“This is why I’m in Hopewell,” I said, placing the photos on the bar.
She gave them a passing glance and continued her chore.
“Did you get a good look, especially of this group photo? Wanted to see if you recognized any of the men in that photo.” I knew it was a long shot, especially with the photo being so old.
She leaned down and picked up some loose napkins, tossed them in the trash. She appeared to run her eyes across the pictures one more time and went back to drying more glasses.
“Hank, what’s going on? One minute you’re interested in what I’m doing here, the next you couldn’t care less.”
She mumbled something as she turned to hang a glass off a rack above her head.
“I’m sorry?”
“Nothing,” she said matter-of-factly.
Subtly, I brought my armpit to my nose. I’d taken off from Virginia Beach earlier in the morning without taking a shower. I smelled BO all right, but it wasn’t mine. It must have been the combination of ten other guys in this watering shithole.
“Do you have something against the FBI?”
A couple of glasses dinged.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t catch that,” I said, turning up my volume just a bit. She flipped back around, and her eyes scanned the crowd. “I didn’t say that.” Her cheeks had turned pink.
“Then why can’t you look at the pictures?”
A quick roll of the eyes, which gave me a nice reminder of my daughter, Erin. “Okay, I’ll take a look.” She picked up the group photo and scanned it, then set it on the bar. “This picture must be twenty, thirty years old?”
I nodded.
Hank tossed the photo on the bar. “What do you want me to tell you? That one of those guys had a beer in my bar last weekend and he told me where he lives? Shit, woman.”
Now I was just a “woman.” I drank some of my water, just to ensure I wouldn’t fire back my own zinger. “I’d be surprised if you’ve ever seen or heard of the people I’m searching for…hell, I don’t even know which of these men I’m looking for, but I guess I just wanted to pick your brain.”
I reached for the group photo at the same time Hank picked up the smaller photo of Mom. She stared at it for a moment, then shifted her eyes to me.
“You’re related to her.”
I nodded.
“Says her name is Charlotte Walsh. So you’re Alex Walsh.”
I smiled. “Not exactly. That’s her maiden name. You’re looking at a picture of my mom from probably forty or forty-five years ago.”
“She reminds me of Judy Garland…before she was messed up,” she said with a smirk.
“Thanks.”
She held on to the photo and then curled her lip inward. “So you said you’re looking for a couple of people. Does that include your mom?”
I released a breath while holding out my hand for the photo. “Yep.” I placed the photo back in my purse.
“Mind if I ask why you’re using such an old photo of her?”
“It’s the only one I’ve got.”
She cleared her throat and looked both ways before continuing. “How long has she been missing?”
“Over thirty years.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“It’s a long story.”
“Well, I’m listening now. Again,” she said with a wide grin.
I gave her the background on my mom’s odd behavior and how I’d thought she had died in a car crash three decades earlier.
“And then three days ago I helped catch a guy who had murdered his wife and the Boston police chief. That’s when the history of my life took a dramatic turn.”
Hank had two elbows on the bar as I explained how Douglass Butterfield unloaded every bit of guilt that had plagued him his entire life—including the hit-and-run in wh
ich he’d evaded arrest. I finished the story of how my mom walked out of the hospital, and Dad’s subsequent cover-up, my stopover in Virginia Beach, and how I ended up in Hopewell.
“You’ve come a long way, and I’m sure you still have a ways to go,” she said.
“I left my family back in Boston to find her, or at least to finally figure out what had really happened to her. This is important. And for some reason, my gut is telling me I don’t have much time. Then again, that could just be the younger Alex talking…the one who missed out on all of those mother-daughter moments.”
Hank wiped a tear off her face.
“Didn’t know that would create such an emotional reaction.” I felt a surge in my own emotions, and I reached for a napkin.
“It’s not…that.”
Did she know something? “What is it, Hank?”
“Oh, dammit, I’m not sure I can trust you.”
“Is it because I work for the federal government? If so, don’t worry. I’m one of the biggest rebels they employ. But they put up with me because I’m damn good at what I do.”
She blinked a couple of times, as if she were trying to better read me and my intentions.
“What is it, Hank?”
Just then, the guy to my right released another wheezing breath. “I’m out of here, Hank. Here’s my six bucks. If it’s not enough, put it on my tab.” He tossed his cash on the bar and pushed out of his barstool.
“Thanks, Monta.” She pocketed the cash and cleaned up his empty before returning to our space. With Monta gone, there wasn’t another person within fifteen feet of us.
Hank moved closer. “You seem like an honest person.”
“Is that a question or a statement?”
“I guess that’s my way of saying that I feel like I can trust you.”
I had no idea why she needed such undivided loyalty, but I wasn’t going to argue the point.
“Something’s bothering you, Hank. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“Actually, now life is…okay, all things considering.”
The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set Book 2) Page 59
