The Glory

by J. R. Mabry

  “Sure. Wouldn’t want to abuse your sensitive snout.” As soon as they’d cleared the door, Herrer said, “I want you to pick up that Wiccan priest guy again.”

  “Which one?” asked Perry. “The one who’s also a Catholic monk?”

  “We have a Catholic monk practicing witchcraft?” Herrer asked, stopping in her tracks.

  “Yeah, but he seemed pretty clean. Also, he wasn’t the leader. That would be the Tomlinson kid. But he seemed clean, too.”

  Herrer resumed her pace. “There was a time when both of them could have been strung up for witchcraft—especially the monk.”

  “I hope you’re not going to break out into a chorus of ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’” Perry cautioned.

  “The charge is murder, and we just need to show that we have a suspect in custody. Don’t charge him, just bring him in for questioning.”

  “We’ve already questioned him.”

  “So think of some more questions,” Herrer said.

  “Begging your pardon, ma’am,” Perry said, her voice betraying her irritation. “That’s a waste of our time right now.”

  “If you get the DA off my ass, it’s going to buy you time. Just do it.”

  Cain saw Perry literally swallow her expletives. “What the fuck do you think is happening in Oakland?” he asked.

  “I’ve got no frigging idea,” Herrer answered. “But trying to figure that out would not be a waste of your time.” She dismissed them with a fierce look and set off toward her office.

  “Let me grab my coat,” Cain said.

  “You don’t need your fucking coat, it’s a heat wave out there.”

  “Oh yeah. The air conditioning in here fools me,” Cain said.

  “Let’s just pick this kid up and get on with it. There’s too much bullshit we have to do…”

  She was just ranting now, and Cain let her do it for the both of them. He always had more of an even keel than Perry—he didn’t get as frustrated or as angry as she did. On the other hand, he didn’t have as good a time as she did, either. He was sure of that.

  As soon as they cleared the doors of the police station, they were confronted by a gauntlet of reporters. “Shit,” Perry said to him out of one side of her mouth as the cameras flashed and people started yelling questions at them.

  “Are there any leads in the Occult Killer case?” one woman yelled above the din.

  “Does the Occult Killer have anything to do with the sigils popping up all over Oakland?” another reporter asked, squeezing into Perry’s personal space. Cain grabbed her hand as she reared back to hit him.

  “Don’t do it,” he whispered. “Don’t give them more fodder.”

  “Do you think it’s a coincidence that there are two unsolved occult cases right now?” a third reporter asked.

  Perry jerked open the door of their dark blue sedan just moments before Cain reached his side. He quickly scrambled in beside her, and they both slammed their doors. Perry squealed away with no regard for whatever toes might have been unfortunate enough to be between her wheels and the asphalt.

  “What the fuck was that all about?” she asked. “And what the fuck is a sigil?”

  23

  Richard duck-walked to the end of the alley then looked up and down the street—it was clear for the moment. Trying to keep his head low, he turned right and scuttled the half block to International Boulevard, careful not to trip on stray trash or the pile of lumber someone had inexplicably dumped on the sidewalk. A bullet struck the cinder block just above his head, and he squatted in reaction. He clung to the corner of a building as he surveyed the street. A few blocks away, he could see pedestrians fleeing. Looking south, he saw a lowrider and a silver SUV parked in the middle of the street, with no apparent sense of order. Huddling for cover behind each were what Richard guessed were rival gang members, waiting for an opportunity to catch the other in the clear. There seemed to be a lull in the shooting at the moment, but he didn’t expect that to last. Looking north, he saw the vast urban desert of downtown Oakland, with its prevalent flora—tagged billboards, broken concrete, liquor stores with wrought iron grates over their windows and doors, and a discarded couch legs up on the sidewalk, its stuffing waving in the wind from a gash in the cushion.

  Richard backed up then turned to run back down the alley to the other side of the block. Once he reached the street, he looked around quickly, ready to spring in any direction. No Terry. He squatted again and crept along the side of the mini-mart back to International. Here he got a different view of the feuding gangs, and his attention was drawn to something he had not seen from the other side of the block. Equidistant between the two gangs was—what? Richard squinted, trying to get a clearer view. It might have been a dog, but it was large. It was also draped in red. It could be a piece of furniture.

  And then it moved. It reared upright, and Richard clearly saw what was occult to him before—it was a child, maybe four or five years old, wearing a bright red shirt. Richard could not tell for sure whether it was a little boy or girl, but the hair was short, and he? she? looked vaguely Hispanic. “Oh, shit,” he said. The gangs seemed to be taking no notice, as they continued their volley of bullets back and forth.

  Then from the far side-street, something caught his eye. He was both relieved and alarmed to see that it was Terry. He waved, but Terry didn’t seem to see him. His eyes were fixed on the child, and his face was set with grim resolve. He walked upright straight toward the middle of the firefight, straight for the child. Richard could hear that he was talking soothingly but was too far away to make out the words. I can’t leave him out there alone, Richard thought. The least I can do is draw fire. Richard stood up to his full height, pulled the Kevlar vest down as far as it would go, then stepped out into the street. He walked briskly toward Terry, but before he closed even half the distance, he was knocked backward off his feet. He landed on his back and hit his head on the pavement as he fell. A pain like he had never experienced in his life lit up his lower right ribcage and he fought the urge to scream. He forced himself to breathe and explored his ribs with his fingers. He felt a frayed area in the fabric of his vest that had not been there just moments ago. The vest had saved his life, but he had probably also broken a rib. There was no way to know now, and it wasn’t important. All that mattered was Terry and that kid.

  Richard was not eager to be thrown onto his back again. He moaned involuntarily as he rolled onto his stomach and glanced to both sides. About a hundred yards to the south he saw the order’s Corolla, right where they had left it. He dared not stand up. He considered crawling—but the prospect of a bullet in the ass dissuaded him. Instead, he rolled.

  He felt ridiculous as he was doing it. Here I am, a grown man rolling down the middle of the street in downtown Oakland, he thought, where I will most likely get either shot or run over. But neither of those things happened. He reached the car without further incident and, hugging the door, fumbled with the key. He willed his hands to stop shaking long enough to get the key in the lock. He jerked open the door and threw himself in the driver’s seat, ducking as he did so.

  He scrambled to put the key in the ignition and turned over the engine. Then, keeping his head low, he pulled away from the curb and steered toward Terry. He watched breathlessly as Terry moved forward, taking one deliberate step after another. Richard saw a bullet catch the sleeve of Terry’s cassock, knocking his arm to the side with a jerk. But Terry didn’t seem to flinch, nor did he stop moving, even for a second. A few steps more and he had reached the child. Terry squatted down, took the child up in his arms, turned, and headed straight for the car.

  Richard didn’t hesitate. He punched the engine and simultaneously leaned over and popped open the passenger side door. A few feet shy of Terry, he swung the car in an arc to the left. The centrifugal force threw the passenger door open wide and Terry jumped in, still clutching the child close to his chest. Richard gunned it and the tires squealed. He heard a pop and a crash as a bullet took o
ut the back window. The sound made him jump and, for a brief moment, he lost control of the steering wheel. The car fishtailed, but Richard grasped at the wheel with white hands. They dodged an oncoming car, as no one seemed to be obeying traffic laws at the moment. At Hegenberger, Richard threw the wheel to the right, and once again the tires screamed as he accelerated into the turn.

  “Are you okay?” he asked Terry as soon as he was sure no one was shooting at them. A passel of police cars passed them on the other side of the street, their lights blazing and sirens in full throat.

  “I’m not sure,” Terry said. “I’m mostly worried about this one.” He loosened his grip, and pulled the child away. Richard could see that it was a little girl, face smudged and eyes wide with fright. She buried her face in Terry’s cassock again. “I think she’s okay,” he said.

  “Why didn’t you answer your phone?” Richard asked.

  “It didn’t ring,” Terry answered.

  “Now is not the time to turn off your ringer, man.”

  Terry shifted the child on his lap so he could fish into his trouser pocket with his left hand. He pulled out a slim, silver smartphone. “Oh shit,” Terry said.

  “What?”

  Terry held the phone up—there was a circle about the size of quarter cracked into the face of it, and the end of a bullet protruded from the center, as if it were a bullseye.

  24

  Brian had no idea where the day had gone. He sat on the edge of his bed in the room filled with Serah Bat Asher memorabilia and stared out the window. It wasn’t until the light had begun to mellow into the late afternoon glow that he realized time had been passing. He heard the front door rattle and, a moment later, heard the deadbolt slide. For nearly the first time that day, he ventured out into the hallway. Elsa was struggling with a number of packages, and Brian rushed to help her. With more energy than he’d had all day, he scooped up a grocery bag and bore it quickly to the kitchen, returning a moment later to grab another. Then he joined Elsa in the kitchen as she began to put things away.

  “How has your day been?” she asked, turning to the cupboard with a couple cans of black beans.

  Brian studied her lean, Nordic features and her long blond hair—different from Chava in almost every possible way—and wondered at how, in this couple anyway, opposites really did seem to attract.

  “Quiet,” he said.

  “That’s not a bad thing,” she smiled at him but turned away quickly. Brian had always found Elsa a little cool and hard to read. But it was clear how deeply she loved Chava, and that was the important thing. The fact is, he had not had many opportunities to really talk to her, alone anyway. In most events at which they met, she was always kind of Chava’s plus one.

  “No,” he agreed. “I didn’t have much energy today, it turned out.”

  “Are you depressed?” she gave him a slightly concerned look. Elsa was a Marriage and Family Therapist, so her question was not surprising.

  “I guess so. But it’s not…it seems normal, given the circumstances.”

  “Yeah. I get it. I know how I’d feel if Chava…” But she just shook her head, as if the thought were too horrible to contemplate.

  Brian put the cold cuts in the refrigerator, noting how carefully everything was separated. Chava and Elsa kept a kosher kitchen, and Brian reminded himself to be careful of the rules.

  “Want some tea?” Elsa asked.

  “Sure,” Brian said.

  Elsa turned on the stove and then turned to the sink to fill the kettle. “Are you angry?”

  Brian sat down at the small table near the window. “Yeah, I guess so. Not as angry as I was. More…hurt now, I guess.”

  Elsa grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and put a tea bag in each.

  “Do you think you can forgive him?”

  For a few minutes, Brian couldn’t answer. Elsa didn’t push him. Instead, she seemed to cherish the silence between them, and Brian didn’t feel any pressure to fill up that silence with words. It was refreshing, even healing. Finally, he said, “I think I can. But not yet. I need some time.”

  The kettle started to sputter, and Brian realized Elsa had not lowered the whistle over its spout. She picked it up and poured steaming water into both of their cups. Then she set one of them in front of Brian and sat across from him. She leaned on her elbow and looked directly into his eyes.

  “It’s not broken, you know,” she said.

  “What’s not?” he asked.

  “Your covenant. With Terry.” She took a hesitant sip of the tea. “That’s the thing about covenants. They’re not like contracts—you know, one party breaks it and it’s null-and-void? Covenants are durable. They don’t end just because one party fucks up. I mean, where would Israel be now if that were the case? Just think, how many times have we been like Hosea’s wife? How many times have we let God down? But our covenant with HaShem is still in effect, because HaShem is faithful to us, even when we are not faithful to HaShem.”

  Brian considered taking offense. Elsa had converted to Judaism when she and Chava got together and, like many converts, zeal for the faith was strong in her. But a part of him still bristled at being lectured to about his faith by a convert. He chose to let it go. “You’re saying that Terry and I are still connected, because I am being faithful to him, even if he hasn’t been faithful to me?”

  “Exactly. That’s how covenants work. One party fucks up, but the other party stays faithful until the first comes to their senses. You can hold the covenant for both of you. You might not want to, and you might not feel like it, but you can.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair that the one who gets hurt has to work the hardest,” Brian looked at his tea.

  “No. But since when did fairness enter into it? The question is, what do you want? Do you want to end the covenant you have with Terry? You both have to agree to it in order to set it aside. Or…” she leaned in and waited until he met her eyes, “do you still love him?”

  The memories of nearly a decade came flooding over him—of the nights they had slept holding one another tight, of the love they had made, of the life of the Order that he had been thrilled to be part of. He considered the loss of all of that and felt an oily well of despair rise up within him. “Yes,” he said, nearly choking on the thickness in his throat. “I still love him.”

  “Then you’ll have to do the work,” she leaned back in her chair and took a generous sip from her mug.

  “I think it’s more complicated than that,” he said.

  “How so?” she asked. She was patient, kind. It was a side of her he’d never really seen, one that he liked rather a lot.

  “It isn’t just about Terry. It’s about me, too.” He looked away. “I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels. I always thought…I always thought I’d do something…important. Not just…cooking. Sometimes I feel like a den mother over there.”

  Elsa laughed, even though it was clear she tried to stifle it. “What Chava doesn’t understand is how you can stand to be with goyim all the time. She doesn’t realize how…offensive that is.”

  “That doesn’t bother me,” he said. “They’re not Jewish, but their love for HaShem is deep. It’s real. It’s filtered through Jesus, but what are you going to do? They’re Christians.” He smiled sadly. “And I love them. All of them. They’re my family now.”

  “Are they forcing you to cook?”

  “No. I just…do it.”

  “Are they intentionally keeping you from…whatever it is you want to do?”

  Brian thought about it and took a sip of his tea. “Never. I think if I announced I wanted to be a mountain climber tomorrow, Dylan would high-five me, Richard would start researching climbing schools, and Susan would start working out a budget to make sure it happened.”

  “It sounds like they love you.”

  “Yeah. They do.”

  “So if nothing’s stopping you from doing what you want to do…what’s the problem?”

  He didn’t know how to answe
r her. “I don’t think I know what it is…what I’m supposed to do.”

  “Then it isn’t really about them, is it?”

  Brian felt a strange clarity that was punctuated by a sickness in the pit of his stomach. Maybe this isn’t about the Order or Terry, he thought. Maybe this is about me. It occurred to him that this was about his vocation, his call, his purpose. His cluelessness about his own call frightened him. Several minutes of silence passed between them. “Speaking of call,” Brian began.

  “Were we?” Elsa smiled.

  “Uh…sorry, I think I went a ways down the road without you. Uh…how do you feel about this Serah Bat Asher stuff? I mean, I thought I knew Chava pretty well. But…I didn’t know about any of this.”

  Elsa sighed deeply then leaned over, both elbows on the table. “Oh, God,” she said. “Well, I’m not sure I’d speak of that as a call, exactly. It’s more of a hobby. At least, that’s what I tell myself. Between you and me, she’s obsessed.”

  “The guest room feels a little…obsessy,” Brian agreed.

  “Well, you know, it could be worse,” Elsa said, staring into her mug. “She could be a gun nut. Or she could be into dog shows.”

  Brian shuddered.

  “So she spends several hours a week on a global manhunt for a mythical character from the Torah—who she thinks is still alive. Is that crazy?”

  “Uh…I thought you were the expert on crazy.”

  “That’s what scares me,” Elsa said. “If one of my clients was this far gone, I’d be really worried.”

  “And you’re not worried about Chava?”

  “Well, except for the time she spends on this, she’s pretty normal, don’t you think?”

  “For a socialist-vegetarian-lesbian-activist rabbi? Yeah, she’s your standard brand,” Brian deadpanned.

  Three beats later, they both burst into laughter. “Good point,” Elsa conceded.

  “What I don’t understand is…well, the picture she has up, of what Serah looks like today? I know that person. I know who the photo is of.”