Servant

by J. S. Bailey

  To Bobby’s surprise, a man of average build appeared at the corner of the house wearing gardening gloves and rubber boots. Though Bobby hadn’t been able to see his eyes last night due to the sunglasses obscuring the upper part of his face, Bobby could tell right away this was the man who had called himself Paul.

  Both Paul and Randy seemed equally surprised to see each other.

  “Mr. Bellison?” The man dragged his arm across his pale forehead to wipe away a bead of sweat. The knees of his jeans were stained with dirt and bits of grass. “What are you doing here?” His gaze flicked to Bobby, and before Randy could answer, the man said, “Wait. I talked to you at the church last night.” Bobby was grateful when he failed to mention that their meeting occurred while he cowered in the janitor’s closet.

  “That’s right,” Bobby said, glancing at Phil, whose eyes had grown round behind the lenses of his glasses. Just who was this Paul? Maybe if he introduced himself, Paul would do the same. “I’m Bobby Roland.”

  He held out his hand, and the man shook it in a weak grip after pulling off his soiled gloves. “Nice to meet you again, Mr. Roland. I apologize for not getting around to a more proper introduction last night, but what’s done is done.” He shoved his gloves into a back pocket and glanced apprehensively toward the abandoned shop on the other side of the road. “The sky itself has eyes. Let’s talk inside.”

  Bobby and the others obeyed. Paul led them into a small living room that had a hardwood floor and simple furniture and instructed them to sit down on the couch.

  “Did you look me up in the parish directory?” the man asked once the door closed. He sat down in a forest-green armchair and folded his hands together. “I don’t prefer to advertise my place of residence.”

  “Actually,” Randy said, “Bobby says he tailed you home last night. It turns out he’s suspicious of black-clad men who turn up in churches late at night.”

  Spots of scarlet appeared on the man’s cheeks. “You followed me? What in the world for?”

  Bobby tried to hide his embarrassment by straightening his shoulders and looking purposeful. “You hinted that someone was after you. Someone who might hurt me in order to find you. If I was going to get thrown into something dangerous, I at least had the right to know where I might be able to find you again.” He paused. “Who are you, anyway? Seeing as nobody’s bothered to introduce you to me.”

  A faint smile played about the man’s lips. “I’m Father Laubisch, the assistant priest at St. Paul’s. And if you’ll remember, you didn’t see me there. You saw a man named Paul.”

  Bobby tried not to roll his eyes. This was stupid.

  Father Laubisch went on. “And today you dropped by so Mr. Bellison can properly introduce us to each other—nothing more than that. Mr. Mason came along out of courtesy. I pray you’ll stick to that story if anyone ever asks.”

  Bobby felt a small measure of relief when he saw that both Randy and Phil seemed to be just as clueless about what was going on. “I don’t understand all the secrecy,” Bobby said. “If you’re the assistant priest, why did you need to disguise yourself last night? And who were you supposed to meet?”

  “I’ll get to that.” Fear lined his face, and he threw a nervous glance at the front door. “Mr. Bellison, I should have told you months ago, but certain things have kept me from doing so. My apologies.”

  “Please just call me Randy. We’re all friends here.” He paused. “I think.”

  “I hope so.” The priest looked so on edge that Bobby suspected he’d fly through the roof if anyone so much as sneezed. “Can you promise whatever is said in here doesn’t leave this room?”

  “I’ll make that promise after I hear whatever you’ve got to say. I have no idea what this is about.”

  Father Laubisch closed his eyes. “God forgive me,” he said in a quiet voice, then went on. “Several months ago I was hearing confessions while Father Preston was away at a retreat. I was there for about an hour and thought I’d seen the last of them for the evening, and just when I got up to leave the confessional I heard someone come in and kneel down on the other side of the screen, so I sat back down and greeted him.”

  Randy looked as enraptured as a child listening to a fairy tale.

  Father Laubisch paused for several long seconds. “He stayed there for a minute without saying anything, but then he spoke up and told me he’d murdered sixty-three people. And he was flippant about it! I had no idea how to respond to him.”

  “Geez,” Randy murmured, his eyes wide.

  Father Laubisch continued. “He told me he wasn’t sorry because his victims were already dying. The only healthy person he’d tried to kill had gotten away. I asked him why he was telling me this since I could phone an anonymous tip to the police, and he laughed and said it would be a violation of my vows no matter how anonymous I was about it.

  “Then he stepped around the screen so we could see each other face to face. He was of slender build and had black hair, but I immediately recognized his gait.” Father Laubisch closed his eyes again as if to block out the image of the man. “It was Graham Willard. And he had a gun.”

  The room grew more silent than a mausoleum. Bobby discovered he was clenching his fists so tightly that his fingernails cut into his palms, and he forced himself to relax them.

  Go home, the voice whispered in his mind. You’ll be safer there.

  He brushed the thought away as if it were a speck of dust, though the temptation to heed its advice still remained.

  “Sixty-three people,” Randy said at last, his face bleached of color. He turned Bobby’s Reds cap over and over in his hands. “I lived with the man. For years! How could he have gotten by with that without me noticing?”

  “Maybe he was lying,” Bobby said, finding the idea of murdering a single person bad enough as it was.

  “I’m not so sure about that,” Phil said. “Any time he left the house, he could have been . . . Dear God. What could have brought this on in him? He was a Servant!”

  “He told me why,” Father Laubisch said softly. “He said his first killing was an accident. A car accident, to be exact. He was thirty years old when it happened. It’s my understanding that he began his new hobby soon after.”

  “Dear God,” Phil repeated. “That was forty-five years ago.”

  “How does that turn somebody into a serial killer?” Bobby asked. The whole notion was ridiculous, and if he guessed correctly, Graham had probably made it up as a sort of lame excuse for his actions. “Lots of people are killed in accidents. That doesn’t make the survivors decide to kill more people.”

  Father Laubisch stared at him with dark eyes that made him uncomfortable. “That’s because most people aren’t Graham Willard. He admitted that he’d become addicted to the act, just like someone might become addicted to alcohol or pornography, though he didn’t show any remorse for it. He didn’t seem to think he was doing anything wrong.”

  “Then why did he show up at the confessional?” Randy asked. “Do you think he’s got a bit of guilt hidden deep inside that he’s trying to acknowledge?”

  “No, that isn’t why he came.” Father Laubisch glanced to Randy with a pleading look in his eyes. “Please forgive me. He didn’t give me any other choice.”

  Randy’s expression darkened. “Any other choice about what?”

  The priest swallowed. “He held the gun against my head and made me swear to help him out in his scheme against you. He wouldn’t explain why he’d tried to kill you or why he wanted to cause you any kind of harm. He just said I would need to report to him several times a week on what you were up to. He also said he would need my help in other matters whenever the need arose. I agreed.”

  Randy’s lip began to curl, and Bobby could tell he was making a strong effort not to whip out his knife and test its sharpness on the man’s neck. “Why would you do that to me? When you found out about us, you swore you’d protect me if I was ever in danger, just like Father Preston did.”

 
The pinkish tinge returned to Father Laubisch’s cheeks. “Because something inside me said I was better off saving my own skin at your expense, but rest assured that if he ever told me to cause you harm I wouldn’t have gone through with it.”

  “Gee, isn’t that reassuring?”

  He let Randy’s remark pass without comment. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you as often as I can, though this past week I had some personal matters to attend to, which is why I was unaware you’d chosen to quit your job. Which admittedly makes my job somewhat harder. I even had copies of your keys made one day when you’d left them lying on the office desk. Graham would need them, he said. Or someone he worked with did. Because there are others he’s enlisted to help him. One of them is—”

  “Lupe,” Randy said. His face looked like it was made of stone. “I’m aware of that.”

  The priest let out a sigh of relief. “I’m glad you know, but I’m surprised she told you. If Graham threatened her the same way he threatened me . . . Graham said he would always have someone watching me. Someone who had no fear of carrying out his requests. If he caught me defying him, I would be ‘taken care of,’ to use his words.” He fell silent for several seconds. “I know it doesn’t sound like it, but I’ve done my best to keep you safe. Yesterday I created a diversion to make sure that Graham and his helper would be temporarily preoccupied. Then I took the opportunity to slip a note under the wiper blade on Miss Sanchez’s car instructing her to meet me in the church parking lot. I’ve played along with Graham so well that he seems to believe I’ve been converted, but I know I’m still being watched. That’s why I couldn’t stay at the church any longer than necessary. Graham’s assistant could find me and demand me to tell him why I was there so late in the evening since it’s outside my normal routine.”

  “What were you and Lupe going to do?” Randy asked.

  “I was going to ask her to go to the police with me. Our story would be more convincing with two of us to tell it. If we’d hurried, we could have contacted the police before Graham’s assistant finished his task.”

  “Would you consider telling us what this task is?” Phil asked.

  Father Laubisch shook his head. “Not yet. I don’t want any of you to accidentally let word of it slip in front of the wrong ears. And since I don’t know how many other people Graham has hired, we don’t know which ears those are. But as Mr. Roland here knows, Miss Sanchez never showed up last night. I’m concerned something may have happened to her.”

  “It did.” Randy briefly recounted the morning’s events, including the news that Graham had gone to Randy’s house, most likely intending to kill him. “And we lost him in the center of town. Do you know where we can find him?”

  “Yes. We’ve met at a house northeast of—” A loud knock on the front door came so suddenly that everyone jumped. Father Laubisch rose and crossed the room. When he held his eye to the peephole in the door, he stiffened.

  “Who is it?” Randy said, dropping the volume of his voice.

  “A—a young man. Younger than you.”

  Randy got up to join the priest at the door, and Bobby followed. Father Laubisch stepped aside to allow each of them to look in turn. “I’m picking up a bad aura,” Randy said once he’d taken a good look at the guy, “but I don’t know him. What about you, Bobby?”

  “Let me think.” Bobby squinted. The unknown visitor had dark blond hair and was no older than twenty-one or twenty-two. He wore khaki pants and a white shirt, had shoulders that slouched a bit, and was neither fat nor thin: the kind of guy who could blend into any crowd without notice.

  The sight of him triggered something in Bobby’s memory. He had seen this guy before. A passing face in the streets, maybe. Or perhaps one of the customers at the restaurant from which he had so recently been fired.

  Something inside of him said that Caleb would know him, too.

  Randy tapped on his shoulder. “Earth to Bobby. Do you know him?”

  “No, but I’ve seen him before. Somewhere around town, I think.” The guy just waited, gazing out toward the road in a nonchalant manner as if he had all the time in the world.

  He didn’t look like a threat. But when he faced the door again to knock, the dark look in his eyes sent a surge of terror through Bobby’s veins.

  “Don’t open the door,” he said, his voice suddenly small.

  Nobody moved.

  He gave Randy a pleading look. “We should get out.”

  “How?” Phil asked. “He’s probably got us blocked in.”

  “I didn’t see another car out there. He must have walked.”

  “Do you see any weapons on him?”

  Bobby eyed the visitor’s clothing, looking for a bulge indicative of a poorly-concealed holster. “No. But he might have hidden them.” He patted his pocket, where the kitchen knife was still nestled inside the towel. “Does this house have a back door?”

  Father Laubisch cleared his throat. “Yes. But if you circle back around to the driveway, won’t he see you?”

  The visitor knocked again. His blue eyes narrowed to slits, and he jiggled the knob.

  To Bobby’s dismay, the door swung open. Father Laubisch had failed to lock it upon their entry into the house.

  “Run!” Bobby bellowed before the visitor could step all the way into the room. He bolted down a hallway leading out of the front room, the others on his heels.

  His feet ground to a halt when raised voices issued from behind him.

  Phil grabbed Bobby’s arm and dragged him onward toward the rear of the small house. They let themselves out the back door as quietly as they could—which wasn’t that quiet at all, Bobby thought—and stood there on a wooden deck, indecisive.

  Bobby made a quick sweep of the yard. There weren’t many places to hide in the immediate vicinity. A grill and picnic table sat on the deck. A square shed guarded the back edge of the property, and behind that were woods.

  Bobby suddenly felt they’d made a terrible mistake. “We can’t just leave him in there,” he whispered. “That guy must be the one Graham has spying on him. He’ll kill him!”

  Randy shook his head. “We don’t know that. Come on, let’s hurry to the car while he’s still distracted.”

  Just as they started around the side of the house to where Bobby’s car sat in front of the detached garage, the muffled sound of a gunshot issued through the walls.

  Though the day was warm, the temperature of Bobby’s insides grew colder than the Arctic tundra.

  “Crap. No. Move.” Randy, whiter than a sheet, shoved Bobby hard in the side, urging him to continue to the car.

  Bobby wasn’t about to argue, though it seemed his feet had sprouted roots anchoring him to the ground. A man was dying in there. Or he was already dead, in which case there wasn’t a thing any of them could do. God, help us.

  He forced himself to keep moving, casting one nervous glance back at the house while he went.

  When he stopped before his beloved Nissan, his heart sank into the approximate region of his stomach.

  It appeared that his car sat upon four black deflated balloons. “My tires,” he said dumbly. “He slashed them.”

  Phil scowled again only this time Bobby could see fear in his eyes.

  Bobby suddenly had the overwhelming compulsion to run toward the woods at the back of the property. The trees there appeared to extend for several acres, perhaps even more than that. If he could conceal himself well enough among them, he would have time to call the authorities.

  Yes, he would do that. It was the safest option he had.

  BOBBY MADE an abrupt about-face as he made a beeline toward the line of trees, and the gray darkness of dizziness threatened to cloud his vision. Please don’t let me faint. Not when there’s a guy with a gun coming after me.

  He wasn’t sure if Randy and Phil had decided to follow him. There had been no time to explain.

  The ground beneath his feet soon became covered in brown needles shed from the evergreens reaching for t
he sky above him. He caught glimpses of houses on other streets in places where the trees briefly thinned, but he didn’t bother to run to any of them for help. If the gunman followed him into the home of an innocent party and killed them, too, he would never be able to forgive himself.

  The land dipped into a small, damp gully and he jumped down into it, pressing his back against the wall of earth to minimize exposure. He couldn’t hear the sound of pursuing footsteps. Had Randy and Phil been hurt? He hadn’t heard any additional gunfire, but then again, he hadn’t been listening.

  With a shaking hand he withdrew his cell phone from his pocket. Dialing the emergency number filled his head with unpleasant flashbacks from six years before, and he shoved them away before they could upset him.

  A male voice spoke in his ear. “This is 911. What is your emergency?”

  “I . . . uh . . .” The words died in his mind. A priest had just been shot back there. What was he going to say? He swallowed and began again. “Someone’s been shot at 2128 Maple Road. I mean, I didn’t see it, but I could hear it through the walls. And I saw the guy who did it. He was about twenty-one, white, had sort of dark blond hair, and was wearing white and tan clothes.”

  The operator sounded dubious. “If you didn’t see the shooting, how do you know what the suspect looked like?”

  “Because I saw him on the porch just before I heard the shot. I just assumed—”

  “Are you currently in a safe position?”

  “Yes. I mean, I think so.”

  “Emergency crews should be there shortly. Whatever you do, do not try to confront him.”

  “I wasn’t planning on it. And thanks.” He ended the call—probably before he was supposed to—and shoved the phone back into his pocket.

  As he sat there waiting for some other horrible thing to happen, he kept running the gunman’s face through his catalog of memories. Where in the world had he seen him before?

  It suddenly occurred to him that the gunman might have been the man smoking in his car in the parking lot at Lupe Sanchez’s apartment complex the other night. Not that he’d seen the guy then (it had been too dark), but his gut told him that his guess was right.