Godless

by James Dobson

  “Of course they do,” said Mrs. Tolbert. “But—”

  “Listen, Mom,” he interrupted. “There are billions of dollars at stake in this debate. Every potential volunteer is a potential source of revenue for a man like Dimitri, not to mention a potential life preserver for a federal budget drowning in debt. I should have realized…” He stopped.

  “What’s wrong?” Tyler asked in reaction to the congressman’s face.

  “Imagine the headlines. ‘Parents of Youth Initiative Critic Volunteer for Transition to Support His Cause.’ What better way to discredit me?” He turned toward his parents. “Mom, Dad, I’m so, so sorry.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said the elder Tolbert. “You’ve done nothing wrong.” Then the old man looked straight into Tyler’s eyes. “Am I right?” he demanded.

  More right than he knows, thought Tyler. How much to say? It was Julia who had originally suggested someone like Evan Dimitri might provide clues in the Santiago case. Innocent enough, he had thought. Float the letters by Dimitri to glean a scrap of information, no matter how remote. Instead of leading him to the killer, however, Dimitri had shut him down right after seeing copies of the letters written by Matthew Adams.

  “Julia,” Tyler said, “I think I can provide the confirmation you need for part of Matthew Adams’s confession.”

  She appeared confused by the comment. “How?”

  He hesitated. “Can’t say. I can only say that Evan Dimitri had access to Matthew Adams’s letters.”

  “Which would have given him what he needed to frame Matthew!” she said, connecting the dots. “So he was telling the truth. Matthew has been nothing more than a pawn.”

  “So it would appear.”

  “I don’t care if he’s a pawn, a knight, a bishop, or a rook,” said Mr. Tolbert, “I want that man arrested for what he tried to do to my wife.”

  “Of course,” said Tyler. “Don’t worry. We’ll track him down.”

  “He could be anywhere by now,” said Julia, glancing at a clock beside Mr. Tolbert’s bed. “It’s been nearly four hours since he left Pastor Ware’s office this morning.”

  “Alone?” asked Tyler.

  A blank stare.

  “Did Matthew visit the pastor’s office alone this morning or was the other attacker with him?”

  “I believe he was alone.” Julia appeared to think for a moment. “Why do you ask?”

  “Because it’s been over twelve hours since the other man fled the Tolberts’ house. He could be anywhere in or out of the country by now.”

  “Dear Lord!” said Mrs. Tolbert. “That means he could be in Washington. Angie! The kids!”

  Tyler felt a swell of panic in the room. “Congressman Tolbert,” he asked intently, “are your wife and children in a safe place?”

  “They’re at home,” came the urgent reply.

  “Baby Leah,” whispered Julia.

  “What about her?” asked Tyler.

  “I can’t say for sure,” Julia said with confusion and alarm.

  “Can’t say what?” Mr. Tolbert demanded.

  “I’ve felt a need to pray for Leah, as if something was about to happen. I hadn’t thought it might be connected to this incident until now.”

  Kevin was already activating his phone.

  So was Tyler. “This is Detective Cain,” he said to the dispatcher. “I need you to contact the D.C. police immediately. I want a patrolman sent to the home of Congressman Kevin Tolbert right away.” He looked toward Troy, who gave him the address. He repeated it into the phone.

  The congressman appeared distraught, and suddenly pale. “No answer,” he said. “I’ll try my backup phone.” He pressed another icon. One second later he reached into a vibrating pocket, then grimaced at the realization he had brought both phones with him.

  “Is there any other way to reach her?” asked Tyler. “A neighbor perhaps?”

  Tyler noticed Julia kneeling beside Mrs. Tolbert in an apparent fit of prayer.

  That’s when the congressman’s phone rang again. Tyler glanced at the screen to make out what appeared to be a photo identifying the caller.

  Kevin’s fingers shook as he accepted the call.

  “Angie?” he pled. “Is that you, babe? Are you all right?”

  A brief silence as all eyes tried reading the congressman’s face. Features frozen in fear quickly melted into a warm, relieved grin.

  “Hi, buddy!” he sang while tossing a wink toward Mrs. Tolbert and Julia. Their prayers, it seemed, had been unnecessary. Or perhaps answered. “I’m with Grandma and Grandpa,” he was saying. “Uncle Troy and Aunt Julia are here, too.”

  He paused to listen. “Now?” he asked before adding, “you got it!”

  Kevin tapped an icon before pointing the device at the television screen mounted on the wall. “Tommy says we all need to see something.”

  The screen came alive. They waited a few seconds for the big event. “Ready, Daddy?” said a boy who, to Tyler’s eyes and ears, seemed seven or eight years old.

  “We’re ready, buddy!” Kevin replied.

  Tyler positioned himself at just the right angle to see what was on the screen. A lovely woman, the congressman’s wife, sat on a sofa holding a toddler on her lap.

  “Hi there, Leah,” said Grandma, returning the child’s Mommy-induced wave.

  “Hi, Angie,” added Julia.

  “I’m so glad you’re all together,” said the mommy to her relieved audience. “You won’t believe what just happened.”

  The screen zoomed closer to the toddler.

  “Here we go,” came her big brother’s voice.

  The lovely woman leaned close to whisper something into the little girl’s ear. Whatever she said prompted a smile of delight. All eyes remained fixed on the scene.

  Then they heard it: a single, indecipherable syllable, followed by another.

  The room erupted with elation as if the kid had hit a grand slam in the World Series.

  “Did you hear that?” shouted the congressman while accepting a kiss on the cheek from Julia and a high five from Troy.

  Tyler looked at the elder Tolbert, who sat beaming with pride in his hospital bed. “What just happened?” he asked.

  “This is a big day for the Tolbert family,” the old man explained. “Our granddaughter, whom we feared might never speak, just said her very first word.”

  “Not just any word,” added the congressman. “She said, ‘Daddy’!”

  Chapter Forty-One

  Tyler woke to a smell he barely recognized. He glanced at the clock: eight a.m., too early to rise on a Saturday morning. But the aroma of sizzling bacon teased his appetite and his curiosity. Renee had expunged all fat and flavor from his diet shortly after the honeymoon. Why, all of a sudden, had she decided to fry up a skillet of breakfast heaven?

  “Hey you,” he yawned after finding his way to the kitchen.

  “Hey back at ya,” she said with a wink.

  “What’s this?”

  “Oh, just a little surprise.”

  Tyler had been a detective long enough to recognize a decoy when he saw one. Renee had something up her sleeve. Under normal circumstances he would have resisted the temptation to take the bait. But Renee, unlike the criminal class, knew his greatest weakness.

  “Smells terrific!” he said while taking a chair at the kitchen table. Renee’s parents, Gerry and Katherine, were already seated, casually sipping their usual grapefruit juice. The two had become another part of the marriage package. With no place else to go they had ended up moving in with their daughter and her reluctant boyfriend turned devoted husband. They were, at times, a pain in the neck. But they were Renee’s family. His family. And the inconvenience of their presence came with a sense of satisfaction he had never known before asking for her hand.

  Renee used a fork to remove a piece of bacon from the pan. Tyler frowned at the sight of a turkey strip. He had expected the good stuff.

  “Smitty called,” said Renee casu
ally.

  He couldn’t remember the last time the assistant chief had called on a weekend. “What’d he say?”

  “Wanted to know if you had seen the weekend journal this morning.” She delivered a piece of dry toast and bacon to Tyler’s plate. “Here you go,” she said while kissing his cheek. “Enjoy!”

  He offered an appreciative grin while nibbling. “I’ll take a look,” he said. “Seen the tablet?”

  “Next to your plate.”

  But it wasn’t.

  “Daddy!” scolded Renee. “I put that there for Tyler to read the news, not for you to play Pac-Man.”

  “Tetris!” he insisted before sliding the device toward his son-in-law. “Pac-Man was for kids.”

  Renee rolled her eyes while Tyler tapped the screen twice. A headline appeared.

  FRANKLIN SUPPORTER LINKED TO SANTIAGO ASSASSINATION

  He glanced at the byline. It read “Julia Davidson Simmons.”

  “She did it!” Tyler said.

  “Did what?” asked Renee.

  He held a “wait one second” gesture toward his wife while scanning the article. It included nearly every important detail.

  The unsolved mystery of Judge Santiago’s assassination.

  The anonymous confession from a transition industry worker.

  A string of “volunteers” at odds with Saratoga Foundation chairman Evan Dimitri.

  Large donations to Josh Franklin’s campaign in conjunction with efforts to expand Youth Initiative policies.

  A series of allegations against Franklin that, of course, he denied.

  “She doesn’t say anything about Matthew Adams,” Tyler mumbled to himself.

  “What’s that?” asked Renee, who, it seemed, hadn’t really been listening.

  “The suspect I tracked down last year, the one who wrote those letters to the judge; she doesn’t mention his name.” He thought for a moment. “No, I suppose she wouldn’t. Revealing an anonymous source would destroy her credibility as a journalist.”

  “More bacon?” asked his wife, oblivious to the conversation her husband was having with himself.

  “No, thank you,” he said, waving off the offer.

  Gerry nodded eagerly while lifting his plate.

  “What did Smitty say, exactly?”

  “Like I said, he asked whether you had seen the weekend journal.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Excuse me for a moment,” he said before moving toward the bedroom to make a call.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” Renee insisted. She patted the chair in a summoning motion. “I have another little surprise for you.” She paused. “Well, a big surprise actually.”

  As he suspected, the bacon had been a ploy. He obediently positioned his body back at the kitchen table while his mind scripted the conversation with his boss.

  Dimitri will have seen the article by now. He might already be on a private jet leaving the country. Or hunting down Matthew Adams.

  “I said, close your eyes!” sang Renee.

  He did.

  “Now give me your hand.”

  “Why?”

  “You’ll see.” He sensed his wife holding her breath while placing a tiny object in his palm.

  He opened his eyes and glanced at the gift. A white thermometer-like device displayed two solid lines.

  “Does this mean…?” he began.

  She continued holding her breath while her head nodded at a feverish pace.

  “So we’re gonna have a baby?”

  She exhaled. “Can you believe it?”

  “But they said our chances were—”

  She finished his sentence. “—terrible! I know.”

  A year earlier Tyler would have been mortified at the news. That’s when he was trying to figure out how to escape yet another clingy girlfriend. The thought of becoming a father would have been the only thing unpleasant enough to scare him away from sex. But now, thanks to Smitty, he had a whole new perspective on marriage and kids. A whole new purpose to his once-empty life.

  “I didn’t think we could do this!” Tyler said into her moist, forty-year-old eyes. “I mean, our age.”

  “You mean my age,” she corrected.

  “Well, yeah, they said—”

  “I guess God had other plans,” she cut him off before pressing her lips against his.

  Exactly what Smitty would say, thought Tyler.

  “Congratulations, my boy!” said Gerry while Katherine pressed both hands excitedly over her own mouth.

  “OK,” said Renee. “Now you can go call Smitty.” A sly smile.

  “You already told him about this, didn’t you?”

  A hesitation. “He made me tell.”

  “How did he make you tell?”

  “When I answered the phone he asked how I was doing,” she confessed, sheepishly biting the tip of her index finger.

  Tyler sighed while kissing her cheek. “I bet he’s almost as excited as me.”

  “Almost,” she giggled while patting his bottom. “Now go on…Daddy!”

  * * *

  They spent the first few minutes of the call celebrating the news.

  Tyler thanked Smitty for the influence he had been in his life, especially when it came to his marriage to Renee and his emerging faith.

  “I lay this at your feet, too, you know,” he said accusingly.

  “Lay what at my feet?”

  “This silly grin on my face,” Tyler replied. “You remember. Last year at this time I would have thought my life was over if you told me I was about to become a father. Now it feels like my life has finally begun!”

  “I hear you, my friend. Wait till you have a second. It just gets better.”

  “We’ll see about that,” said Tyler doubtfully. At fifty, even one child was more than he’d expected. Two was probably more than he should hope for.

  A brief silence offered an opportunity to ease into the purpose behind Tyler’s call.

  “What should we do about Dimitri?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But he—”

  “It’s out of our hands, Tyler. The Feds own the case from now on. I suspect they were at Dimitri’s door with an arrest warrant before he had his first cup of coffee this morning.”

  Tyler felt a wave of relief. A dissonant chord that had kept him on edge for a year had finally resolved. But he also felt a twinge of disappointment. He had imagined himself making his first big arrest since rejoining the force. Still, he was grateful that, thanks to his partner turned boss and mentor, he was back in the game at all.

  “But there is still the matter of this anonymous source,” said Smitty. “Are you thinking Matthew Adams?”

  “I am, sir,” said Tyler, removing his friend hat to assume the role of subordinate. “Julia Simmons said she and the pastor got a bad feeling, like he might be preparing to harm himself. Or possibly someone else.”

  “Listen, Tyler, I hate to mess up such an exciting day for you and Renee, but I wonder if you might pull out the old file and see whether you can piece together a possible next step for Mr. Adams.”

  “No need to apologize, sir. I was thinking the same thing myself. I’ll get right on it.”

  They ended the call.

  Tyler walked back toward the kitchen. Renee stood facing the sink, still aglow over the big news. He approached, wrapping his arms around her from behind and resting the palm of one hand on her abdomen. She leaned into his presence to accept a kiss on her neck. Then he rubbed the protective cocoon, home to his forming little boy or girl, while whispering into her ear, “I love you, Mrs. Cain.”

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Matthew approached the front of the classroom, where he placed one hand on the lectern, followed by the other. He relished the sense of dignified authority the pose evoked. Then he scanned the sea of vacant seats and naked desks he had often occupied while a student at the University of Colorado. His mind returned to lectures he had heard in this
very room, delivered by his once-beloved professor, mentor, and, he had thought, friend.

  It was Dr. Vincent who had enticed Matthew toward Manichean philosophy: Spirit good. Body bad.

  It was Dr. Vincent who had encouraged Matthew’s dream of earning a college degree, entering graduate school, and, eventually, becoming a professor himself. The same dream his mother had died to finance.

  And it was Dr. Vincent, he now realized, who had caused much of the trouble. Not because he had identified Matthew as a potential assassin. That, he now understood, had been an unfortunate misunderstanding. Nor because of his absence during Matthew’s dark days. College professors can’t interrupt their writing sabbaticals every time a depressed former student requests a meeting.

  The real reason Dr. Vincent was to blame had nothing to do with what had happened in the past twelve months. It was something he had said the year before.

  “Remember, Mr. Adams, there’s no such thing as a mortal sin. Just hard choices.”

  Fourteen words that had strengthened Matthew’s hesitant resolve. Fourteen words that had changed everything.

  They had convinced Matthew that Father Tomberlin was wrong to call volunteering a mortal sin.

  They had convinced him that his mother’s estate should fund a son’s dream rather than sustain a decaying body.

  And they had replaced Matthew’s childhood dogma with a new, enlightened path. A path now strewn with five lifeless faces Matthew couldn’t forget, haunting his sleep and fortifying his shame.

  Matthew heard the heavy clank of an opening and closing door echo down the hall, followed by the click of shoes. He bent down to conceal himself behind the lectern. Then he breathed a sigh of relief. The steps were moving away from rather than toward his hideout.

  He felt like a criminal on the run. A feeling he despised. A feeling he would end.

  Matthew walked toward Dr. Vincent’s desk, where he had placed two envelopes. Which to leave? The first contained a letter of thanks for all the professor had done to form his evolving beliefs. It represented Matthew’s love for the world of academic scholarship. He had once aspired to an intellectual stature that, he had believed, might free him from the common duties of an ordinary life.