Confirmation

by Barna William Donovan

  Nevertheless, the feminist media critic phase didn’t hold Lindsay’s interest for long either. After she had been invited to a Bible-study meeting by one of the teachers in her media-literacy class, she started her journey to “salvation.” The Bible-study group led her to realize, she said, that she was trapped in a world of superficial, material distractions. Her soul, she explained, was withering away. She told Rick that they needed to get away from a place like Los Angeles. She wanted to move someplace smaller, slower-paced, a community where they could start a family and instill spirituality in their children while shielding them from all the amoral, vapid commercial values of Los Angeles. By that time, Lindsay had been regularly attending the Reconstructionist Faith Chapel.

  How she could go from the feminist phase to the Reconstructionists Rick had a hard time figuring out for a while. He had attended a couple of services with Lindsay, and concluded that the group was like a collection of malicious Smurfs. They seemed charming and friendly enough on the surface—sometimes even overbearingly so—but you couldn’t help but feel there was something threatening underneath. Moreover, one of the main tenets of their faith was the recognition of and respect for God’s different plans for the genders. God had meant men to fulfill one role in society and the family, the group preached, and women another, and there were no two ways about it. Women, the Reconstructionists believed, were “blessed” to have been allowed by the Almighty to create life, and were entrusted to nurture children in the home.

  Perhaps, Rick wondered in time, the group’s committed hatred of the mainstream media in general and Hollywood in particular was what had swayed Lindsay so suddenly. But she had quickly turned into a devout follower and begged him to move away from Los Angeles and resettle in the small northern California town of Tulare. They could buy a house there, Lindsay explained, Rick could either get a job on the local police force or look for something else—she acknowledged that the Tulare Police Department might not have paid as well as the L.A.P.D.—and she would become a stay at home mom. When Rick told her that he was thinking of going back for a master’s degree and pursuing a detective’s rank, their strained relationship began to fracture. Pastor Donald Burke, however, running regular family counseling sessions at the church, had offered to be a friend and a confidant to Lindsay.

  “Well, I hardly think there’s reason to believe it’s the Armageddon just yet,” Rick said at length.

  He said it with a light inflection, and when he saw the darkening look on Lindsay’s face, he knew he had said it too lightly.

  “How can you say that?” she replied. She had that wide-eyed incredulity in her tone that had so frustrated him back in the days when she was being sucked deeper and deeper into the Reconstructionist Church. It was the sort of incredulity marking her words when she used to ask him, “What do you mean you think my friends are insane when they say they’re not sure that dinosaurs ever existed?” “Look at the deaths these globes caused. And there will be more, you can bet on that.”

  “This was an accident,” Rick said more evenly this time.

  “Come on! You’re not one of these people grasping at straws about how there’s a scientific explanation for this, are you? You can’t possibly believe that it’s all a hoax.”

  It was interesting how Lindsay reacted so strongly to the hoax theory. She had been eventually convinced that all the dinosaur fossils found around the world were a part of a massive conspiracy by scientists—funded by a global Satanic network—to discredit the Bible in a plan to pave the way for the coming of the Antichrist. “No, of course I don’t believe it’s a hoax,” he said.

  “So what do you believe, Rick? I mean, yeah, I didn’t think you were trying to prove that this is all just some mass delusion, with this occult show you’re participating in.”

  Oh, boy, the occult again, Rick thought. But that was exactly how she was bound to characterize Confirmation now. When Lindsay decided to devote herself to any one of these reimagined personas, she would commit one hundred percent. Shortly before their divorce, they had fought over whether or not to give candy to kids trick-or-treating. Participating in the Satanic holiday, Pastor Burke had concluded after years of careful scriptural research, was sure to sentence one to eternal damnation. Any interest in ghosts, psychics, fortune-telling, tarot cards, UFOs, Wicca, or new age music was occultic and thus Satanic.

  “I’m after the truth. And I don’t know what to believe. This is a mystery, and so far I haven’t heard any explanation that seems to make sense, to be perfectly honest. And I sure as hell don’t think that it’s the Biblical Apocalypse.”

  Of course, before the last words came out of his mouth, he realized he’d handed Lindsay a perfect comeback.

  “Sure as hell, Rick?”

  “I don’t seem to recall anything in Revelation about stone globes.”

  There was a smile on Lindsay’s face now, but it was taut and bitter. “I’m impressed. You know where the Bible talks about the end of the world. You saw that in a documentary on the History Channel?”

  “No. Saint Anthony’s Catholic High School. The Jesuits told me all about it. Even though I’m sure you and Don don’t take the Catholic Church seriously, because it’s not medieval enough.”

  “Like you take it seriously….”

  “Lindsay, look, what I’m saying—to answer your question—is that we have an unknown phenomenon on our hands. And so far, from what I’ve seen, the real danger is not in the globes themselves—”

  “Come on—!”

  “It’s in us! Do you understand? In everyone’s preconceived B.S. dogma they’re trying to graft onto these things.”

  Lindsay shook her head and looked away in obvious disgust. “This is unbelievable.”

  “You can’t believe what people are capable of doing to—?”

  Lindsay’s gaze snapped back onto Rick. “What makes these globes appear? Huh? What? What did it? What placed them all over the world? What is responsible? That’s the evil at work here. What is the agenda behind all this?”

  “What does that matter right now? It’s people who are about to go at each other’s throats. Go ask that magician, Pike. Go ask the people who thought they were justified in beating him half to death.”

  Lindsay’s shoulders twitched in a dismissive shrug. “Well, they’re obviously a bunch of crazed cultist fanatics. So what’s that got to do with anything? Crazy people do—and always did—crazy things. What matters right now, for the whole world, is the supernatural, evil force that’s behind these globes.”

  “No, it’s not….”

  “It’s not?” Lindsay snapped.

  Rick thought she was about to yell at him.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” Lindsay said. “Would you open your eyes? Oh, and by the way, those new age or paranormal nuts who beat up that magician probably worship these ghost-hunting and UFO occultist shows you’re filming right now. Have you ever thought about that?”

  “Have I ever thought about that?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Have you ever thought about what’s the big difference between you and them? You seem to be just as convinced that you’re right and you’re on the side of the angels, as your so-called occultist—”

  “All right,” Lindsay cut him off and took a step away from him. Aside from the anger in her eyes, Rick thought he could see something like...hurt? “I’ve just about had it with this.”

  “Lindsay,” Rick said, trying to sound somewhat conciliatory this time. Of course, he knew it would do no good. “Can’t you understand what you’re doing—?”

  “I understand what you’re doing,” she cut him off. “Attacking my faith just like you did during our marriage.”

  “Oh, come on! That’s not quite how it happened, as I recall.”

  By the time the last words were out of his mouth, he no longer sounded conciliatory. And he no l
onger wanted to. At the same time, his eyes wandered the crowd, trying to see if Lindsay’s husband, that little shit, was anywhere nearby. Had Don Burke seen his wife talking to her ex-husband? It was more likely that he was getting a rush out of rubbing elbows with the military people at the funeral. The Reconstructionist Faith Church loved the military, and tried pulling soldiers into the fold as much as the Scientologists loved celebrities. The U.S. military, they believed, had to be remade into literal “Christian soldiers.”

  “That’s exactly how it happened,” Lindsay said.

  “No, what I was attacking, what I objected to, was the Pastor Donald Burke fucking my wife. That’s what I objected to.”

  Rick would have been the first one to admit that there was a grotesque, comedic irony to the final breakup of their marriage. Lindsay ultimately embarked on an affair with her pastor, Don Burke, who at the time also happened to be married. A moralistic preacher who could sermonize a storm for hours about traditional family values, who decried America’s moral decline, who believed contraception was a Satanic practice, wrecked two marriages because he couldn’t keep his hands off Rick’s wife. How this self-proclaimed “moral warrior” could justify his behavior, though, had its own unassailable logic. “God has a plan and a life partner for each and every one of us,” Lindsay had explained to Rick when she told him that she wanted a divorce. “None of us listened to what God was saying—speaking to us in our hearts—when we married the people we did. Can you understand that, Rick? The fact that we had so many problems, that I wasn’t comfortable in our relationship, that Don just knew in his soul that he had not married the right woman, is proof that we did not find our proper life partners in the very beginning. But try and believe, Rick, that in the end you will see that everything happens for a reason.” That, in both Lindsay’s and Burke’s reckoning, had justified their cheating on their spouses for over six months.

  After their divorce, the only time Rick ever got a piece of personal correspondence from Lindsay—everything else had come from her lawyer—was when she sent him a “words of encouragement” card in the midst of the Llewellyn Barclay fiasco. “One day you will see a reason for everything,” she had written.

  “I’m through,” Lindsay said, recoiling from him. “Have a nice day, have a nice life, Rick. Go and enjoy yourself with your beautiful new TV star girlfriend. She’s the woman of your dreams, I’m sure.”

  “For your information, she’s not my girlfriend, OK?” Rick said, and if he wouldn’t have sensed that near-palpable hatred radiating off Lindsay, he wouldn’t have added, “But yes, I do like her a lot, and care for her a lot, and respect her hard work. That’s where the two of us stand. I respect her as a colleague, and the way she’s pursuing her dreams despite setbacks that would have defeated so many other people.”

  Lindsay stared at Rick before replying. Her hatred did not seem to subside. But, of course, Rick couldn’t have expected it to. “You know what, Rick?” she said at length. “Fuck you!”

  After Lindsay stalked away, balancing precariously over the grassy ground in her steep high heels, Rick noticed soft footsteps behind him. When he turned, he saw Cornelia. The awkward look on her face revealed that she must have heard a lot of the exchange. Especially the last parts.

  “Well,” Rick said, “I didn’t handle that as well as I wanted to.”

  “I’m sorry I intruded on that.”

  “Like I said, I was curious about what…people like her and her husband were, you know, doing here.”

  “Oh?” Cornelia said cautiously.

  “Let’s just say their take on the globes is as disturbing as some of the weirdest things we’ve heard so far. I bet Jerry’ll tell us to get them on the record too.”

  “No doubt. But look, Rick, I just came over to tell you that something’s come up that you should know about.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, a bit of relief flooding through him. It would have been nice to steer away from the uncomfortable topic of Lindsay Burke.

  “Come on. We should go and talk to the other guys.”

  Rick gave her a quick nod.

  As they started back toward their partners, Cornelia said, “Thanks, by the way. That’s very nice what you said back there.”

  Rick noticed a tiny hint of a smile in the corners of her lips.

  3.

  “Dude, it’s a standoff, man!” Ian called from the passenger seat behind Cornelia.

  Rick took his eyes off the road for a moment, firing his glance at Cornelia next to him, then at Ian behind her. The two of them seemed to have a dueling-tablets competition going on, racing to find the latest breaking news out of the Noe Valley neighborhood.

  “It’s not quite a standoff,” Cornelia replied.

  “It’s a bunch of people about to tear the whole block apart,” Knight said from the seat behind Rick. “That’s all anyone knows, and we’ll know for ourselves in…what? How long ‘til we get there?”

  Rick wished they wouldn’t keep asking him that. They would know as much as he did if they glanced at the GPS system on the dashboard. “I’m not from San Francisco,” he replied as he gunned the engine again, darting through the yellow light of an intersection. “We’ll get there as soon as we do.”

  “So then why are you driving?” Melinda called from the back seat behind Knight and Ian.

  “The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, ain’t it?” Tony Griffin, wedged in between her and Matt Cooper, mocked.

  Rick had the urge now to reach behind him, grab someone’s tablet, and smack Tony in the face with it.

  “Because he thinks having been a cop makes him the best driver on the team,” Cornelia mumbled, still not dissuaded from scanning the online news sites on her own tablet.

  Knight barked forth a derisive laugh from the back seat.

  “You want to take the wheel, Doc?” Rick shot back, and couldn’t help adding, “Maybe driving getaway cars was better training for this.”

  “I know it was,” Knight replied, his voice sharp and challenging apart from just sarcastic.

  “All right,” Rick called through gritted teeth now as he hurtled the Ford F-150 SUV through another yellow light just as it turned red. “Could the comedy routine come to an end now, if that’s quite all right? Anyone’s more than welcome to walk.”

  “Yeah, good idea,” Cornelia said.

  The dead-seriousness in her voice made an impression on Rick. She was about to follow up with something crucial, so he said nothing.

  “There are shots being fired out of the house and into the house,” Cornelia said at length.

  Out of the periphery of his vision, Rick could see Knight lean forward. He could feel the tension ratcheting up in the vehicle.

  “OK,” Cornelia went on, “so this seems to be the most complete information so far: This is the house of one of the guys involved in the start of the Powell Street chain reaction—”

  “At the top of the hill?” Lacey called from the back of the SUV. “Where the globe started rolling?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” said Cornelia, eyes and fingers skimming over the surface of her iPad. “There were two cars, remember? One hit the other. The other hit the globe and the globe went down the hill. So we’re dealing with the guy who rear-ended the first car.”

  Rick, of course, had figured as much. When Cornelia dragged him away from the cemetery, she did say that some kind of an armed standoff underway in the Noe Valley might have been globe-related. It had to have something to do with Powell Street, he had reasoned.

  “So get this…,” Cornelia went on.

  “Holy crap,” Rick heard Ian say quietly. He, too, Rick thought, must just have come across the same information Cornelia was relaying.

  “The guy in the middle of the standoff’s a fugitive,” Cornelia said. “Convicted sex-offender from Missouri. Statutory rape and child porn charges.”


  “This guy’s toast,” Ian mumbled. “They’re gonna kill him by the time we get there. They’re gonna mess him up.”

  “What happened?” Rick asked, glancing at Cornelia.

  “During the police investigation of the crash, his criminal record turned up,” she said. “And it leaked.”

  “His neighbors found out about it?”

  “Yeah! And they’re trying to evict him,” Cornelia added.

  “Evict him? Hell, they’re trying to kill him,” Ian said.

  “Holy crap is right,” Rick heard Lacy say.

  He glanced in her direction in the rearview mirror. She was looking at Ian’s tablet over his shoulder.

  “This is a lynch mob,” Lacy said. “Old-school horror movie shit. Villagers with the pitch forks.”

  “She’s right,” Cornelia said. “A group of neighbors tried to kick his door down and drag him out. Looks like he has a gun and started shooting. And some neighbors seemed to have guns, too, and they’re shooting back.”

  “What about the cops?” Knight asked.

  4.

  “Cops got here in the middle of the whole thing,” one of the neighbors, a forty-something man in an Oakland A’s T-shirt, said. “Too late to stop this—”

  The man’s words were cut off by six rapid-fire pops that sounded like semiautomatic rifle rounds. Everyone instinctively ducked behind the SUV.

  As Rick scanned the block, so did everyone else, all the locals already occupying covered positions behind the cars parked along the two sides of the street. But he noticed Matt and Tony aiming their cameras, respectively, over the hood of the F-150 and around its rear.

  “Unreal,” Matt gasped.

  “Watch your head!” Rick warned as he flattened against the rear of the SUV and glanced through its windows and up the block toward the source of the police standoff.

  Knight, Cornelia, Melinda, and Lacy were crouched beside the vehicle on its sidewalk side. The Ford faced nose upward on the steep one-way street, parked on the left side.