by James Dobson
“That’s nonsense.”
“Which part?” asked Phil.
“Ellie Baxter is no vulnerable old lady. She has spunk, and more courage than anyone in this room, myself included.”
“That may be,” answered Phil, “but it doesn’t change the fact that we have a serious problem on our hands.”
A prolonged silence.
“So, what do you want me to do?” Alex finally asked. “Should I meet with Freddy Baxter?”
“Absolutely not!” said Phil. “The last thing we need is for you to mess this up more than you already have.”
“But I—”
Phil raised his hand to halt the pastor’s objection. “We don’t want to hear it, Alex. The board has already decided that I should handle this directly. I deal with tough negotiations every day in my profession. I don’t have the time for this mess, but I’ll make it a priority in order to avoid escalating tensions.”
Alex scanned the room. Every eye was staring at the floor. “I see,” he said. “If that’s what the board has decided.”
“It has,” snapped Phil.
“But, if I may make one suggestion.” All eyes moved back toward Alex. “I think you should speak to Mrs. Baxter before you respond to her son’s claim.”
“That’s a good idea,” braved an otherwise docile Lydia Donovitz. But she pulled back into her shell when Phil frowned at the comment.
“It’s too late for that. I’m set to meet the lawyer over lunch tomorrow. Our goal tonight,” he said toward Alex, “was to inform you of the situation and ask you to cease and desist this political nonsense until after I’ve settled the case.”
Alex swallowed hard. “I understand. I’ll lift you in prayer.”
Phil appeared to squirm at the sentiment. “Uh, thanks. I could use it,” he said. “For now, however, I need to ask you to leave while the board handles one other item of business.”
“Of course,” said Alex. He rose from the conference table and turned toward the door.
“Thank you, Pastor,” he heard from behind. He looked back toward the voice of Mary Sanchez.
“For what?” he asked.
“For trying,” she said, like a mother hoping to cheer a child who hadn’t made the cut.
Alex nodded gratefully before walking out of the room.
“Mrs. Mayhew?” he said after bumping into his assistant, who had, it appeared, been listening through the door. “I thought you went home.”
“Oh, sorry, Pastor,” she said sheepishly. “I just had a few more details to handle before heading out.”
Great, he thought. The entire gossip network probably already knew what Alex clearly sensed: his days as pastor of Christ Community Church were numbered.
Chapter Thirty-Two
“More wings?” asked the perky waitress.
Matthew looked in her direction, this time noticing a face. Cute. She reminded him a bit of Maria Davidson back in their high school days. He let his eyes move down to enjoy the rest of the view. There was a time when he would have been timid about such blatant ogling, a carry-over from catechism classes and a once-intact chivalry. But the girl’s skimpy uniform had made an offer he couldn’t refuse.
She didn’t seem to mind, offering a playful smile in response.
Must be new, thought Matthew. Every other waitress at Peak and Brew had become callused to lonely-guy advances.
“It’s all-you-can-eat night,” she added. “What do you say?”
He winked, hopefully. “Why not? How could I say no to such a lovely…face?”
She patted his shoulder with one hand while removing his bone-filled basket with the other. “Be right back!”
Matthew relished an echo of the girl’s scent while watching her dart toward the kitchen.
“Pretty nice, eh?” came a familiar voice, accompanied by the sound of a beer mug settling onto the table. Matthew turned toward a man he had last seen crushing a cigarette butt into his living room carpet while irreverently waving a priestly hand. “I think she’d say yes,” Mori added while slapping Matthew’s slumped shoulder.
“Say yes to what?” he reluctantly asked the barstool buddy who had turned into a midnight phantom.
“I’ll give you two to one that lovely piece of femininity would accept an invitation to your place after her shift ends.”
The suggestion both bothered and enticed. Matthew had never been so bold with women. But then, he had never truly believed all things were permissible. How had Mori worded his living room absolution? “Go and believe in sin no more,” Matthew recalled. “Is that it?”
The man chuckled. “I like the sound of that,” he said. “Makes it much less complicated to pick the forbidden fruit.”
Both men took a sip of beer.
“Speaking of which…” said Mori in the approaching girl’s direction.
A fresh basket of spicy wings arrived. Matthew offered Mori the first pick. He accepted gratefully, giving Matthew a moment to think.
Mori’s midnight visit had been a dream, hadn’t it? Surely the alcohol had clouded Matthew’s mind before he dozed off. There had been no cigarette burn in the carpet the next morning. His barstool pal had never actually spoken the blasphemous mockery beguiling Matthew’s mind. Nor had he been the source of insidious laughter behind Matthew’s lingering dread. Stress from the new job, he decided, had caused the frightening episode. And tonight was free of such pressures. No new clients awaited his assistance.
“So,” said Mori, “how’ve you been?”
“Truthfully, a bit frazzled.”
“Work?”
Matthew nodded. He needed a willing ear, yet doubted the wisdom of confiding in a man prone to transformation into a smoking, cackling demon. But, sadly, he had no one else. Bryan “Mori” Quincy had become, for better or worse, Matthew’s sole confidant.
“I’m thinking about quitting,” he explained.
“Over your head?”
Matthew took offense. “It’s not that,” he said. “I just…well…let’s just say it’s complicated.”
“Remind me of your job.”
“I work with the transition industry.”
“That’s right! I remember now. You sell suicide to old ladies.”
Matthew frowned. “Actually, I moved out of the sales side of things into research and development. A pretty big deal, actually.”
“Well, now, that sounds more like something a former philosophy major should do for a living.” He paused. “Wait. You said you’re thinking about quitting?”
A sheepish nod. “Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“Feeling guilty?” asked Mori.
“For what?”
“How should I know? I’ve just been around long enough to connect the dots between ‘It’s complicated’ and ‘I’m thinking about quitting.’”
Matthew nodded at the truth of it.
“Let me guess,” continued Mori. “Whatever this research and development job entails carries certain…how shall I say it…ethical dilemmas.”
Matthew said nothing. Of course helping volunteers carried ethical dilemmas. Each assignment had created a knot in his gut and each death had included a moment of inexplicable grief. Matthew felt as if chunks of his own humanity fell away with each final gasp of life. But it was the price someone had to pay for a greater good. Not to mention a bigger paycheck.
“No,” he finally said. “It isn’t guilt.”
“Good,” Mori reaffirmed. “Pesky thing, that guilt. Especially, I imagine, when conducting research and development in your line of work. Sort of like the old Nazi experiments.”
The comment stunned Matthew. “Why do you say that?” he asked. “What do Nazi experiments have to do with research and development?”
“That’s what they were doing,” Mori replied. “Hitler’s Germans weren’t mindless fools with a fetish for killing Jews, Gypsies, and homosexuals. They were on a quest to move us up the evolutionary ladder.”
“By exterminating an entire race?”
“Oh, that came later: collateral damage of the war. Although even that fit their philosophy, don’t you think?”
Matthew reached for a wing and a fresh napkin. “What philosophy is that?” he asked before taking a bite.
“The belief in the greater good of a purified human race. They started by sterilizing the infirm to avoid the spread of weak genes. Then they progressed to euthanizing debits, those incapable of contributing to society.”
“Doing what to debits?”
“Euthanizing them.”
“Meaning?”
“The same thing as the Youth Initiative,” Mori explained. “Funny, until this moment I never realized how similar they sound. Anyway, the other killings came later as a way of ethnic purging. Basic Darwinian philosophy: survival of the fittest and all that.”
Mori reached for another wing, pausing his hand over the basket while shooting a glance toward Matthew.
“Go ahead, I’ve had my fill,” said Matthew. He cooled his tongue with a long swig before placing the empty mug back on the table. “But I still don’t see the connection to research and development.”
“Surely you know about the experiments,” said Mori.
A blank stare.
“Fascinating bit of history,” Mori continued. “The Nazis conducted a series of medical experiments on prisoners, mainly Jews and disabled non-Jews. After the war the experiments were labeled torture, so the findings were suppressed. But I imagine they learned quite a bit that might otherwise have proven useful.”
“Like?”
“Couldn’t say. They experimented on twins to try to understand genetics. They studied bone, muscle, and nerve regeneration by removing them from one person and grafting them into another, all without anesthesia. Imagine that! They even tried to find ways to treat hypothermia since so many soldiers died on chilly front lines. If I remember correctly, they stuck Jewish prisoners in ice water for hours and made others stand naked outside in sub-zero temperatures. And that’s just a few of the experiments. The poor souls who survived were either killed or left to linger with a mutilated, fragile body.”
Matthew cringed at the sound of it.
“I know. And all of that agonizing disfigurement would have been wasted had the Allies destroyed the findings. That’s what some medical ethicists wanted to do. They disagreed with how the information was obtained, so wanted to deprive the world of useful knowledge. Like I’ve said a thousand times before, the world would be much better off if we completely abandoned the notion of sin. I would never do something like that to prisoners myself,” he said as if in self-congratulation. “But if the Germans had the courage to make it happen, why shouldn’t someone reap the benefits?”
“Courage?”
“Insanity, then. Either way, why waste potentially useful research. Am I right?”
Mori began downing his own drink as Matthew considered the question. This same man had introduced Matthew to the notion that a world without God was a world without limitations, something well and good for the strong, but rather hard on the weak. It took audacity of mind to believe as Mori did. And a callous heart, something Matthew had not sufficiently formed.
“I guess you’re right,” he finally answered. “I have struggled with ethical considerations. But that’s not the main reason I’m thinking about quitting.”
“What is, then?”
He wanted to tell Mori the whole story, seek his advice on a dilemma he still had no idea how to resolve. Someone out there was in a position to frame Matthew for a murder he hadn’t committed. Someone was toying with him, using his former alias to threaten retaliation should Matthew decide to walk away from…from what? Had Matthew accepted a legitimate job advancing an important innovation in transition services? Or had he been a petty hit man doing the dirty work for some invisible power broker? Either way, Matthew felt trapped in a quandary no drinking buddy could help him escape.
“Matthew Adams?” Mori was saying while snapping his fingers in Matthew’s direction. “Still with us, my friend?”
“Sorry,” Matthew said self-consciously. “Listen, I need to scram.”
“So soon?”
“Early morning,” he lied. “Lots to do.”
“Then do you mind if I cut in on the waitress? I mean, if you aren’t going to ask her…”
Both men looked at the girl. She was leaning against the bar, chatting with yet another lonely guy.
“She’s all yours,” said Matthew while waving his tablet over the bill. He stood to leave.
Mori put a hand on Matthew’s chest. “Hang on a second,” he said. “Looks like I’m too late. She’s heading this way. Like I said, I think you made an impression.”
Matthew watched the girl approach, her spunky trot slowing to an alluring saunter. She began running her fingertips up and down her plunging neckline. Frozen with anticipation, Matthew looked into her eyes to confirm he was, indeed, her intended prey.
Then he nearly let out a scream of terror.
Chapter Thirty-Three
It was a face from a nightmare.
No fresh, rosy cheeks.
No bright, penetrating eyes.
No soft, pleasing smile.
Rotting flesh clung limply to a skull peppered with sparse strands of filthy grayish-blond hair. Her body, still vivacious, now carried a head more suited to a cemetery haunt than a one-night stand.
Matthew looked at Mori. He flicked a bit of ash from a half-burned cigarette before slowly returning his friend’s gaze. He seemed amused by the fear in Matthew’s eyes.
“Surprise!” he said with an insidious grin.
Matthew turned back. No girl.
“Who are you?” Matthew asked in a voice fraught with fear.
The man leaned in close. “Keep it together now, Matthew Adams. You can take a little joke, can’t you?”
Matthew began rubbing clenched fists over his eyes. “I’m losing my mind!” he whispered while trying to ignore the voice distorting itself into a devilish baritone of laughter. He covered his ears fiercely, but the sound continued.
“You’re not going to quit that job. Do you understand me, Matthew Adams?”
Matthew pressed his ears even harder. No use.
“Our research isn’t quite finished yet,” continued the invasion. “And you have a very important part to play.”
The laughter resumed as Matthew felt a tug at his leg like the one he had experienced in the nightmare. Something, someone, was trying to pull him into ever-darkening depths. He kicked at the sensation while forcing his eyes open.
“Matthew?” said Mori, who was standing beside the waitress. Both of them looked worried, and confused.
“Should I call someone?” asked the girl, her lovely face restored.
“That’s probably a good idea,” said Mori, clearly at a loss as to what would have prompted such a bizarre reaction. “You OK, buddy?”
Matthew didn’t know how to answer. No, he wasn’t OK.
“I need to go,” he said urgently.
“I can call you a cab if you want,” said the girl.
“No, thank you. I’ll be fine,” he said while weaving himself around crowded tables in a mad dash toward the exit.
Two minutes later he pulled out of the Peak and Brew parking lot. He just needed to get home to sleep off whatever delusion was messing with his mind. Then he remembered that the same presence, real or imagined, had already visited his living room.
He glanced in the rearview mirror and noticed a pair of headlights following closely behind. Still breathing heavily with justifiable paranoia, he turned left, then right, then left again. He found himself on a street that went who knew where, trying to escape who knew what.
The headlights remained a hundred yards behind.
Fear turned to anger. “I won’t let you hunt me like an animal!” he shouted at the mirror while making an obscene gesture. He turned again in hopes of finding a public parking lot where he might force the shadowy menace into the
light. A brightly lit grocery store sign stood just up the road. He accelerated toward the haven of twenty-four-hour shopping convenience.
Matthew raced into a parking space just outside the sliding entrance doors. A mistake, he realized, when the other car, a stretch limo, pulled up immediately behind. He was blocked.
Tempted to run into the store, he thought again. If this was another ghostly apparition, what good would come of that? If a phantom had found its way into Matthew’s living room and favorite sports bar, it could just as easily chase him through the vegetable aisle of a grocery store. He stepped out of the car, determined to stand his ground.
“Good evening, Mr. Adams,” came an unexpectedly pleasant voice. A voice he recognized immediately.
“Ms. Winthrop?”
The limousine door opened. “Won’t you join us?”
Matthew braced himself for another morphing face. Then he bent slightly to peer inside the vehicle. A shadowy figure sat beside Serena Winthrop. He was smoking a cigar. Another demon eager to haunt, or a flesh-and-blood human being planning something worse? There was only one way to find out.
He accepted the invitation to enter.
“I’d like to introduce you to my boss,” said Ms. Winthrop.
Matthew felt himself in the presence of wealth and power.
The feel of leather as his fingers touched the limousine seat.
A tailored suit that lay in perfect symmetry across the man’s broad shoulders, and a deep blue tie adding just the right hint of authority to his white French-cuffed shirt.
Despite a posh package, however, the man seemed gruff. His stern eyes and solid jawline reminded Matthew of an annoyed pit bull groomed for show.
Matthew settled into the seat across from the man. He took a deep breath, determined to display strength he didn’t possess.
The man removed the cigar from his lips. “Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir,” Matthew answered respectfully. Weakly.
“Allow me to introduce you to Mr. Evan Dimitri,” said Ms. Winthrop with a reverence that suggested fame, power, or both.
But the name meant nothing to Matthew. “Pleased to meet you, sir.” He extended a hand. “Matthew Adams.”
