by George Wier
“You said that Shelby was a good man. I believe you. I’ve never met him, but something tells me I will before this is done. I needed to know more about him from you, that’s all. I hope you will forgive my intrusion.”
Rachel wiped her eyes. “It’s okay.”
“I’m going to leave now and go pick up my files. Then I’ll check into a hotel room and sip a little bourbon and read it. In the meantime, if there’s anything you want to tell me that might help—that might help your ex-husband, call me at this number.” Billy pulled a business card from his shirt pocket and laid it on the coffee table between them.
He stood up and turned to go.
“Agent Strongbow?” she called, her voice barely above a whisper.
Billy paused and turned. “Yes?”
“I tried to help Shelby. Really I did. I tried for a long time. One day, I gave up.”
“Why? You don’t strike me as the kind of woman who gives up on anything.”
“Maybe I’m not. I don’t know. But Shel told me to.”
“What did he say to you?” he asked.
“He said, ‘why are you here?’ I thought about it and thought about until I realized I didn’t know the answer. And then I left.”
“It’s okay,” Billy Strongbow said. “That’s all in the past.”
“The past.”
“It’s a funny thing about the past. So many people live in it, neglecting today. And the concept of tomorrow is a little bit sketchy for them.”
“Tomorrow.”
“See what I mean?”
Rachel nodded.
“I’ve got to run, Ms. Ward. Call me when you’re ready.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said. “I hope you can. Help him, that is.”
Billy opened the front door. “Help him? Maybe. Save him? That may be up to you.” He stepped out and closed the door behind him.
After picking up the file at the Austin Police Department, and noting the absence of Lieutenant Quinn Thompson, Billy Strongbow got back in his car and followed his GPS system to a small church in East Austin. The sun was high in the sky and a cool breeze was blowing. He lowered his window, breathed deeply, and rubbed his eyes.
Billy hadn’t slept but a couple of hours the previous night. He’d printed the entire index of files on Richard C. Moore and on Shelby Knight, had taken them home and read until sleep finally overtook him around four in the morning. He had one fitful and rather disturbing dream where Mr. Sheppard Payne was giving a sermon before a crowd of people of color, exhorting them to be watchful. This in itself wasn’t disturbing. What dug so hard into his conscience was that he knew he was the lone person in the crowd for which they should be watchful. When he woke up, he knew something—a thing that had percolated through between the lines of information, surveillance reports and the reports of snitches from the Moore file, and apparent in the lines of the personnel record of Shelby Knight. Knight was no cold-blooded killer. The one life he had taken had destroyed him, completely and utterly. Therefore, he was innocent.
East Austin had changed considerably from the last time Billy had been there. Many of the old neighborhoods had succumbed to gentrification, and instead of row after row of low income tract houses with white asbestos shingles, old tin roofs and yards gone to seed, he saw multi-storied condominiums, trendy coffee bars and restaurants. No doubt the local property tax rate had gone into one of those power climbs that education boards and city councils dearly love. What was missing was the sense of belonging that had once existed there. But, like his mother used to tell him, if you live long enough, everything changes.
Gentrification ultimately gave out to the last vestiges of the old neighborhoods, and the church appeared in the middle of a block.
“Okay, Mr. Payne,” Billy whispered to himself. “Your church is real.”
He pulled over to the curb and got out. Something caught his eye and he looked toward the house next door to the church to see someone waving at him. It was Sheppard Payne.
Payne walked over and extended his hand, a huge grin on his handsome black face. Billy took his hand and let the man pump it up and down a few times.
“I didn’t think we’d see you coming around so soon, but I’m glad you’re here! Would you like a tour of the church?”
Billy returned the smile. “No, that’s okay. I’ve got to find a bite to eat and get a hotel room somewhere. Maybe another time.”
“Fine by me. I live next door to the church. The church is kind of my pet project. I’m the deacon and the caretaker.”
“I’d bet you’d make a good preacher.”
“Oh, now, I don’t know about that. I’m too much of an old sinner. Say, do you like barbecue?”
“It just so happens I do,” Billy said.
“I know a place not far from here where they start the pork ribs cooking in February and pull them off the grill long about September. The meat melts in your mouth.”
Billy laughed. “That’s sounds fine, Mr. Payne, but—”
“My friends call me Sheppard.”
“Tell you what, give me the name and I’ll punch it into my GPS. After that, I’ve got a file to go over and a few hours of sleep to catch.”
“I getcha. The place is Sam’s Barbecue. It’s over on East 12th Street, about a mile east of I-35.”
“Thank you. It was good seeing you, Sheppard.”
“Same to you, Agent Strongbow.”
“Call me Billy.”
“If you’re in town this Sunday, we have a mighty fine church service. You’d be welcome.”
“I’m not exactly the churchgoing type.”
“Suit yourself.” Sheppard grinned widely.
“What?”
“I’m just glad you’re on the job, that’s all. I knew it when I first shook your hand.”
“I appreciate that.” Billy turned and stepped into his car. He looked up at Sheppard. “Coalition for Racial Calm. Is that legitimate?”
“What’s legitimate?” Sheppard asked. “Four or five black businessmen and a hen house full of old black ladies. If that’s not a coalition, there’s no such thing.”
Billy laughed. “Have a good day, Sheppard,” he said, and drove away.
Sheppard stood there. The smile on his face hung on until Strongbow’s Dodge turned the far corner and disappeared back into the neighborhood, at which point it melted away as if it had never existed.
“Well I’ll be damned,” Sheppard said to himself.
CHAPTER NINE
A man wearing medieval armor, shield and sword clanked slowly up the steps from Waller Creek and began walking west along 6th Street. This drew a few initial sidelong looks. After he crossed Red River Street, the cell phone cameras began flashing and passing cars slowed to watch him walk along.
Inside the armor, Shelby Knight began to sweat. He raised the visor and felt the cool west wind in his face, and this made the going somewhat easier.
“Hey, mister! Going to fight the Black Knight?” a wino called to Shelby as he passed him on the sidewalk.
“Keep Austin Weird, man!” a young woman shouted and waved.
Shelby ignored them. He continued along for several blocks and passed a string of bars, some of them beginning to open for the day. A barkeep with an apron the color of dried blood stepped out of a doorway with a broom in hand, took one look at Shelby and raised an eyebrow. “Is the Renaissance Festival in town?” he asked.
“No,” Shelby said.
“Hmph.”
“What am I doing?” Shelby whispered to himself.
He stopped and looked west into the heart of downtown. Along the street in that direction there was nothing but more bars and restaurants. He tried looking to the south, but there was nothing above the row of bars except a few skyscrapers poking their eager heads into the sky. He looked to the north and made out the spire of St. David’s Episcopal Church, two blocks north and west.
He was baptized in that church, had received communion there. He and Rachel were marrie
d there. The image came unbidden into Shelby’s mind. He slowly raised the white veil, looked deeply into Rachel’s eyes and kissed her lips. Another, far more disturbing image intruded over that one. “Why are you here?” he asked her in the night. And she lay next to him and sobbed quietly.
Shelby began walking again, and this time his steps were more purposeful.
A couple tried to stop him and have their picture taken with him, but Shelby said, “I am on a quest,” and left the two behind him.
He reached the church without further incident and walked up to the doors, opened them and stepped inside. The smell had not changed. The rows of pews were as he remembered them. Each pew bore multiple copies of the Book of Common Prayer and the Hymnal 1982, both of which Shelby was familiar. He walked down the aisle.
As he reached the altar, a young, bookish priest emerged from the door to the rectory and looked up at Shelby, a startled expression on his face. Shelby didn’t recognize the man. He had, in fact, not been back to this church in over twelve years.
“May I help you?” the minister asked.
“I’m not sure anyone can help me,” Shelby said.
The minister shook his head slowly. “That’s not true. God can definitely help you.”
“I don’t know that he can.”
The man walked to stand in front of Shelby and studied his face. “I don’t know you.”
“I was baptized here. I was married here. I came back to town today to right wrongs. But now, I no longer know what is right.”
“Here,” the man said, and gestured to the first pew. “Sit and tell me.”
Shelby unbuckled his sword, set his shield aside and sat down on the padded pew, but his armor clanked against the wooded back.
“I am the lowest creature to walk the face of this Earth. There is no redemption for me.”
“I understand what you’re saying,” the minister said. “You’ve been through something. You’ve endured something terrible. God forgives you.”
“That may be. But I can never forgive myself.”
The man sighed. “Yes. I do understand you. That is the worst thing about my job. I can speak all day before hundreds, maybe thousands, and tell them about God’s love. But the hardest part is to convince them it’s okay to love themselves. The question you have to ask yourself is, how can you redeem yourself...in your own eyes?”
“I have no way of knowing,” Shelby said.
The minister paused and turned to face Shelby fully, notching one knee against the back of the pew and let his foot dangle off the front. “This is important. I think you are here, of all places, for an exact reason. God has brought you here today. Do you believe that this is possible?”
“Believe? I don’t believe anything. I have no faith. I have lost it all. I am, myself, lost.”
“Okay. So it’s not important that you believe. What’s important is that you’re here. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” Shelby said.
“Good. Now, you’re a man in armor. You’re protecting yourself from the world in there.”
“Yes.”
“But the world itself needs protecting. If I had a suit of armor, I would be able to go anywhere. I would minister to anyone without fear.”
“I have no fear,” Shelby said. “I welcome death.” The image of Aiden Holloway’s father on his front steps pointing his gun at Shelby rose in his thoughts.
“All the more reason to do what others can’t do.”
“I am no minister of the faith. I have no more faith, like I told you.”
“What about a creed?” the minister asked.
“What creed?”
“Any creed. The creed of a knight, maybe.”
“The creed of a knight,” Shelby muttered.
“Yes! Knights in the Middle Ages had to memorize their creeds and recite them letter perfect. You could do that. Maybe you could teach such a creed. They had lofty ideals. Poverty, charity, chastity, defense of the defenseless, moral right, and above all, a love of Christ.”
“A creed,” Shelby said. “But I’m not a real knight.”
“You’re the most real knight I’ve ever met.”
Shelby gazed at the altar, fifteen feet away. He and Rachel had stood there, together, his hand holding hers as he placed a ring on her finger.
He began crying, silently. The tears streamed down his face.
The minister stood and stepped in front of Shelby. Shelby looked up at him. “I don’t know your name,” the man said, “but I think that you’re a good man. You have forgotten how good you are. To get that back, you must prove yourself to yourself. That’s the hardest thing in the whole world. To prove yourself to a judge, a jury, even whole populations of people—that’s easy. But to prove yourself to you, that’s a tough one. It’s hard, but there’s nothing else you can do except go through it and come out the other side.”
“There’s no other way out?” Shelby asked.
“I don’t think so. I think the only way out may be the way through.”
“Be a knight?” Shelby asked.
“If that’s your calling.”
“A real knight?”
“Give me your sword.”
Shelby tried to hand the minister his sword and scabbard, but the minister shook his head. “No, just the blade itself.”
Shelby removed the sword from the scabbard and handed it to him. The minister almost dropped it.
“This thing is heavy.”
Shelby nodded.
“Follow me.”
Standing up by himself was no easy trick, but leaning forward and pushing up, he made it, however slowly. He followed the minister to the altar.
“Kneel. Don’t worry. I’ll help you back up.”
Shelby nodded and knelt on one knee. It was the exact spot where he had spoken his vows to Rachel.
“What is your name?”
“Danel,” Shelby said. “Danel Artola.”
“Somehow I doubt that,” the priest said.
“It’s my name now.”
“It doesn’t matter. Tell me the words to make a man a knight.”
“ ‘By Saint Michael the Archangel and Saint George the Dragonslayer, I dub thee...’ whatever. I read that in a book. Also, when you say ‘Michael’ you touch my shoulder with the sword, then when you say ‘George’ you touch the other one.”
“By Saint Michael the Archangel,” the sword came to rest on Shelby’s right shoulder, “and Saint George the Dragonslayer,” the sword lifted in the air and came to rest on his left shoulder, “I dub thee Sir Danel.”
“It’s done, then,” Shelby said. He tried to stand and the man put out his hand to help him.
“No. I have to learn to do this on my own.”
The minister nodded.
It took the better part of a minute for Shelby to stand, but when he did he felt less heavy than before.
“What are the odds?” The man’s smile was like a beam of sunlight.
“What do you mean?” Shelby asked.
“This is a first for me. I’ve made a man into a godly knight. I’m sending him out to mete out righteous justice in an unjust and unholy world. This...is a good day.”
“Maybe,” Shelby said. “We’ll see how it ends. What’s your name?”
“Stephen,” the man said.
“I may need your...counsel again, good Father Stephen.”
“Let me walk you to the door.”
Along that walk—the same path that he and Rachel had trod the day they were married—Stephen gave Shelby advice on the Knight’s Creed he was to somehow produce and memorize. Shelby only half listened to him. The other half of his attention was on the bubble rising in his chest. It was something he hadn’t felt in a very long time. It wasn’t until he was outside again in the bright sunshine that he recognized this odd thing. It was hope.
Guillermo Salazar knocked on Robert Ortega’s door and Skillet opened it. No surprise there.
“Oh, Gil. Come on in,” Skillet sai
d.
Gil entered the dingy, cockroach-infested apartment on the north side of Highway 183 in Austin, close behind the Tex-Mex fast food restaurant the trio frequented, and tossed a small cash zipper bag on the table in the center of the room.
“Have you guys been cooking?” Gil asked.
“Naw. Take-out,” Bob said. “Skillet can’t cook worth a damn.”
“How’d you get that nickname anyway?” Gil asked. “Skillet.”
“Uh. Think it’s cause my dad banged my mama on the head before he raped her. That’s how I got here. That’s what my mama says anyway. But she’s crazy. Skillet ain’t my real name.”
Gil nodded.
Of the three, Gil was both the leader and the cold-blooded one. He worked with whatever he had, always varying his methods. Skillet had seen the man kill a man with a dishtowel, which is not especially easy to do. When he used a gun, he always ejected all of the unspent bullets and stuffed them in his pocket, collected any spent cartridges lying around, wiped down the gun and left it. The cops were never going to get wind of Gil, of this Skillet was certain.
Bob stood up from his ratty easy chair, took two steps to the table and made as if to pick up the zipper bag. Gil kicked his hand away and Bob pulled back, cursing, and stuck two fingers in his mouth.
“Don’t touch the bag until I say so,” Gil said.
Skillet laughed. “I told him never to touch the bag. He don’t listen so well.”
Gil stood silent, waiting.
“Who’s the target?” Skillet asked. It was the proper next question.
“A woman.”
Bob pulled his fingers out of his mouth and shook them at the floor. “I never said I’d do a woman.”
“You’re going to do this one,” Gil said. “In fact, I think you’ll be the exact one for the inside part.”
“No,” Bob said, and sat back down in the chair.
Gil turned to Skillet. “Go wait in the car.” He tossed Skillet his keys.
“Yes, boss.”
When the door was closed, Bob looked up at Gil nervously. “I told you when I joined with you assholes that I don’t do women. That’s it. End of story.”
Gil nodded slowly. He sighed, then walked quietly to the kitchen.
“There’s no talking me out of it,” Bob said. Gil disappeared from view and Bob awaited a response.
