by J. A. Kerley
“That project I told you about? It’s scheduled to happen as Pentecost opens. I’m supposed to be there, which means slipping from Key West shortly, at least for a few hours.”
“Don’t go, Reverend,” the singer said, taking Schrum’s hand. “You yourself told me it was wrong, and it’s more than wrong, sir, it’s evil and dangerous.”
Schrum patted Delmont’s hand and stood. He walked to the window and peered outside. The signs had shifted from Bless you and You are my light, to Praise Jesus for healing, Hurry back, and See you on TV. He let the curtain fall back into place. “I gave my word, Andy.”
“To Mr Winkler. He’s a man. What about your word to God?”
Schrum turned toward the door. “Is that the elevator I hear?”
“I figure it’s Mister Johnson and Dr Uttleman. I think they’re coming to take you to Pentecost.”
“Could you leave us, Andy? I need to talk to our friends.”
“I’m not sure they’re always your friends, sir.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, Andy. Are you still going back to the mainland tonight?”
“I haven’t been home in days, Reverend. And now that you’re going to heal, it’ll be good to be back singing on my show again.” The singer started for the door, turned, concern in his eyes. “You’re staying here, Reverend? Not leaving tonight?”
“Let Hayes and the doctor in, Andy. Then please close the door.”
The singer departed. Seconds later Johnson and Uttleman appeared. They looked anxious, trying to hide tension behind expansive smiles.
“Sit and have a drink,” Schrum said. “Roland has a couple bottles in the desk. He’s been saving them for my complete recovery, but I’m feeling pretty feisty right now.”
Uttleman poured and the men sipped quietly until the doctor cleared his throat. “Uh, we’ve been hearing from Eliot, Amos. It seems Pastor Owsley has exceeded all expectations.”
“He’s sprouting angel wings?”
“Eliot now feels Pastor Owsley has the capabilities to launch the event.”
“Eliot doesn’t need me?” Schrum said, looking over the top of his glass. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“The Pastor has blessed the pieces as they’ve come together, and has done a splendid job of being a spiritual intermediary. He has … uh, a potent magnetism, especially as he’s explained his particular theological stance to Eliot, his thoughts on rewards in the here and now. How the world is supposed to operate when the Bible is correctly translated. Eliot and Pastor Owsley have become …” Uttleman frowned, struggling for a term.
“Co-dependents?” Schrum said.
Johnson stood, set his empty glass on the desk and gave Schrum a sad smile. “You’ve benefited greatly from Eliot’s munificence in the past few years, Amos. I hope you’re not sorry to see him shift allegiances.”
“Not at all,” Schrum said, reaching for the bottle and pouring another three fingers. He lifted his glass as if in toast. “I expect the new arrangement will be perfect for both men. Heaven-sent, so to speak.”
“How so, Amos?”
“Eliot and Owsley are both hungry men, Roland,” Schrum said, a wisp of smile crossing his lips. “It’s a blessing that they can now feed on one another.”
I left Belafonte and Monroe to write up their findings and assigned myself the daunting task of tracking down the religious maniac named Frisco Jay Dredd. Florida-wide BOLOs had turned up nothing and I figured the van had been ditched, hidden or disguised.
Belafonte followed me out the door of the meeting room. “Mr Monroe can handle the reports,” she said. “I want to go after Dredd.”
I sighed. “I need you here and ready to handle something, Holly.”
“What?”
“Sissy Carol Sparks, Dredd’s last abductee. If he follows pattern, the woman is dead and waiting to be found. When the victim shows up, I need you to follow through.”
She nodded softly. “I understand. I’ll be ready.”
I sat in my office and scanned the reports on Dredd and replayed my conversation with Wainwright. I couldn’t figure out a handle on the monster: the man was a drifter, a loner, taking cash jobs and moving around like the human equivalent of a neutrino, invisible, virtually undetectable.
My eyes tripped on the police report detailing the time Dredd had barged into a small Baptist church in Satsuma, Alabama, two years ago, pushing the minister – a Reverend Harold Tate – from the pulpit and proceeding to shriek about devils and damnation until the county cops arrived. The report mentioned it took three cops and two Taser darts to subdue Dredd. It also noted that the minister declined to prosecute, saying Dredd was “a sad case with a sadder history”.
I felt my pulse quicken: It sounded like Tate had known Dredd. Hoping against hope for some small tidbit, I dialed the church.
“Hello,” a gentle and countrified voice said. “This is Reverend Tate.”
“Reverend Tate, this is Detective Carson Ryder with the Center for Law Enforcement over in Miami.”
“Oh my …” Tate said, puzzled. “That sounds important.”
“Not such a big deal, sir,” I said. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions if I may. I understand there was a man named Frisco Dredd who commandeered your church one morning.”
“At night, actually. Evening service on a Wednesday.”
“Could you tell me about it?”
“Not much to tell. Mr Dredd banged open the doors in the middle of my sermon and started yelling about all sorts of things … sin, redemption, Jesus. He was obviously drunk or on drugs, not making any sense. He called several of the women in the flock whores and I asked him to leave.”
“I take it he didn’t.”
“He ran down the aisle like a mad bull and pushed me from the pulpit and continued his yelling from there. I was fearful for the people in the church and called the police. They came and hauled Frisco away, still ranting at the top of his lungs. I felt sorry for him.”
“It sounds like you knew Dredd.”
“The Dredds were originally from Satsuma, Detective. They lived in a broken-down gray house on the edge of town and a poorer, scruffier lot you never saw. The household was mother, father, three children and Frisco, who the family took in when Frisco’s mother died in childbirth. He never knew his father. I’m a religious man, Detective, saved by the blood of Christ. But I know I’m a sane man. I’m not sure I could say that about Mrs Dredd.”
“How so?”
“She was a zealot – is that the right word? Crazed by religion, excessive. But by religion, not by God, who I see as merciful and loving. To her, religion was a set of absolute rules and processes. She was a cruel woman, punishing. I heard that she used to tell Frisco that he’d killed his mother by being so full of sin when he was born.”
“My God.”
“The problem was – well, one problem was – that Retha Dredd was a woman of strong desires and excesses. Particularly when it came to men. She couldn’t stop herself from, uh, taking up with them.”
“Nymphomaniacal?”
“I don’t know much about that. I do know she often took up with more than one at a time. A sick, sad lady.”
“What about the father?”
“Tinker Dredd. He died early, alcohol. When alive he seemed to look the other way, though he couldn’t not know what was happening. I also heard that he, um, didn’t much care for women, and that maybe Mrs Dredd brought in some men that, um, he might, uh …”
“I understand, sir.”
“This was a horribly dysfunctional family, Detective. There was pain and suffering and the children were witness to the whole spectacle. But that was behind the scenes, the home life. There was the other side.”
“Excuse me … other side?”
“Just as the creator inexplicably gave Retha Dredd one side that claimed allegiance to the Lord and another that made her lie down with any man she saw, the family had ugliness on one side, beauty on the other.”
&nb
sp; “You’re losing me, Reverend.”
“They were all musical, Detective. They traveled from town to town as the Dredd Family Singers, a gospel group. What a rough life that must have been for the children – living out of an old bus and performing like puppets at revivals and country fairs. The family never made any real money; there were a lot of little gospel groups competing for the same dollars, and the Dredds weren’t anything special … except for the one.”
“You mean Frisco?”
“Andrew Dredd. You wouldn’t know the name. But he went on to make a name for himself on the Crown of Glory Network.”
I felt my breath freeze in my throat. “Crown of Glory?”
“He’s a big singing star there. Of course, Andy couldn’t use a name like Dredd in big-time show business. These days he goes by the name Andy Delmont – much nicer. Andy’s a personal favorite of the Reverend Amos Schrum, who I hear is on the mend, bless his soul.”
55
I stared out the window, trying to stay calm and think. We had a blood connection between the COG network, the girls, and Frisco Jay Dredd, a connection named Andy Delmont, a man whose adopted brother had killed three women; no, four, the Sparks woman almost certainly wrapped in charred wool and beside a roadway or waterway. I shook my head over the destruction and pulled my laptop closer, Googling Andy Delmont, images.
The screen filled with dozens of photos of an attractive, baby-faced man ranging from twenties to thirties, almost all in what I took to be stage costume, white or sky-blue suits with a Western cut, some with glittery music notes on the lapels, some where he was wearing a matching cowboy hat. In some he was on a stage, a golden crown in the background underscored by the words Crown of Glory in shining, metallic gold. Delmont was smiling in every shot, either his default look or he showed the pretty teeth whenever he saw a camera.
Delmont looked eerily happy, like he’d buried the childhood of travel and travail, and I recalled Jeremy’s description of a man he’d seen several times at Schrum’s Key West outpost: “A goofy and ever-present fellow dressed like Gene Autry.”
Delmont, I figured. The constant smile was a bit goofy. Maybe even spooky. The question was, where was Delmont now? And how soon could I aim questions at his unsettlingly cherubic face?
I picked up my phone and dialed. “Baby brother,” Jeremy crooned. “I’m afraid I’m in a spasm of artistic creation, painting, so I’ll have to ask you to call back in—”
“I need to know if Gene Autry is still at the Schrum house.”
“Pourquoi est-ce, mon frère?”
“Have you seen him today?”
“I’ve walked twice around back of the place, just because it gives me a thrill to be so close to a miracle. The Crown of Glory network says the old boy’s ticker seems to have been touched by the Almighty, and requests donations to continue the healing. I’m not quite sure what God does with the money, but maybe the upkeep on Heaven is—”
“Have you seen Delmont, Jeremy?”
“He’s often on the back porch twiddling on a guitar. Not today.”
“Shit,” I said. “I don’t suppose there’s any way you could … no, guess not. Thanks, Jeremy. By the way, how’s Ava?”
I held my breath. Come on, Brother, take the bait.
“No way I could what?” he said, curiosity in his voice.
“Find out if he’s in there – Delmont. Like you’ve said, the place is cordoned off, security front and back. Can’t be done. I’ll call back when this is over and explain why I’m so—”
“Give me a half-hour, Carson,” he said.
Nautilus and Rebecca had started pulling away when his phone rang.
“It’s from you,” he said to Rebecca.
“Greta.”
He turned on the phone. “Hi, Greta. Thanks for talking to us.”
“They was looking for me when I got back. The other girls. I don’t think they know anything.”
“You girls, the four of you … you don’t look out for each other?”
A grunt. “Be nice if it worked that way, mister. But it don’t. Someone’ll snitch. And get something for it. A day off, some cool dope.”
Nautilus recalled the girl’s blunted eyes and understood, figuring the girls had been expertly selected for their vulnerabilities: rejection by family, abuse, chemical dependencies, lack of self-esteem. When you have no worth, words like integrity and honor were just wind off a tongue.
Greata said, “The reason the others were looking for me … there’s a party coming. We’re supposed to clean up and put on our party clothes.”
“When?”
“Tonight. They’re usually late. But time don’t mean nothin’.”
“Where are these parties held?”
“At some fancy house by that lake … Tokalikea or somethin’ like that. The east one.”
“Tohopekaliga?”
“We get driven out there and party. We can spend the next day, too, eat up all the fancy food leftovers. Then we have to come back.”
A question had been nagging in Nautilus’s mind. “You girls at the special motel. You don’t, uh … you’re not like the others, the, uh …”
“The ones that come with the big smiles and always blessing everything?”
“Yes. What’s the story there?”
“Pretty much the truth, I guess. That we’re like a special mission of Hallelujah Jubilee: sinner girls brought there to meet Jesus and git saved. People leave us alone. The ones that don’t hold their noses, that is. Gotta go, someone’s coming. And anyway, that’s all I got to tell.”
My brother called back in forty minutes.
“Delmont’s not there, though old Schrum’s still in residence, God’s hand massaging the old ticker or whatever. No one’s quite sure where Delmont is, though he’s scheduled to play at the network tomorrow morning. It’s Pentecost, you know.”
“How did you find out about Delmont?”
“Assez facile, mon frère. I trotted to the local music store and bought a guitar case, a very nice one. I took it to the door of the Schrum abode and said I had a delivery for Mr Delmont … his new custom-made guitar? There was a soupçon of commotion as pretty young people and stern-faced guards yelled back and forth inquiring as to Mr Delmont’s whereabouts, an important delivery at the door and all. Consensus was that Rodeo Boy recently decamped for the airport, probably heading home to rest his hat before tomorrow’s show.”
“Thanks, Jeremy, masterful work. I’ll pay you for the guitar case.”
“Not necessary, Carson. It’s the perfect size for my hedge trimmer. And by the way …”
“Yes?”
“You don’t need to try and trick me into these things. You might simply ask.”
56
Sissy Carol Sparks felt like crying. She hadn’t cried in years and had almost forgotten what it felt like. The crazy man was going to kill her, burn her alive. That’s what he’d said.
An hour ago she’d had his mouth drooling open, his eyes riveted on her as she’d crawled to him, breasts swinging, hair swaying, the ache of the rock in her thigh, but a soft and wanton smile on her lips. “C’mon, mister,” she’d purred. “You don’t want to hurt me. I can do things to you that’ll leave you seeing stars for a week.”
“Can you fix me?” he’d whispered, a man in a sexual trance. “I need it so bad.”
If I can wear him down, fuck him senseless, I might be able to run outta this hellhole … he even left the door open a crack …
“I can fix you up perfect, mister,” she’d promised. “I’ll make you right.”
The man stared down, a moan escaping his lips as Sissy moved to him. She’d unzipped his stained pants and slipped the underwear down over a bulge; not standing out, but she could fix that. Her fingers moved tantalizingly slow as she eased the saggy yellow boxers down his thighs …
Gasping. Staring. Disbelief.
Everything was swollen like a purple balloon and crusty with blood and pus and she could see what
looked like bright pieces of wire sticking out. Her nostrils flooded with a stench remembered from when her grampa had the diabetes and his toe rotted off.
Gangrene, they called it.
“Fix him, girl,” the man pleaded, grabbing Sissy’s hair and pulling her face close to the reeking, dying organ. “Put your mouth on him and make him better.”
Sissy had recoiled, pulling her head back. The man had put his hand behind her head, trying to drag her into him. “FIX HIM!” the man screamed. “MAKE HIM WELL!”
Sissy had puked her guts across the floor, driving the man even crazier, shrieking about whores and sin and beating her with hands swinging like windmills. She rolled across the floor as he kicked at her, screaming in his own pain as she screamed in hers. He’d cornered her beside a big concrete bench thing with burn marks across it but when he moved in Sissy punched him in his crotch. He’d wailed like an animal and dropped to the floor.
Sissy bolted through the door, finding a woods, trees and vines and bushes and a house in the near distance. She had run to the house and pounded on the door, screaming for help. The door was opened by a pretty-faced man in a cowboy hat.
“Help me …” Sissy pleaded. “There’s a crazy man in that barn over there. He’s trying to kill me.”
“I know,” the cowboy had said in a pleasant voice, his eyes glittering like hot little stars. “You need to pay for your sins, Miss Sparks.”
The cowboy grabbed her neck, Sissy’s strength used up in the fight with the crazy man …
Who limped up to the house two minutes later, punched her senseless, and led her back to the barn on a rope.
“No Sissy Carol Sparks?” I said to Belafonte.
She looked disconsolate, sitting beside the phone and leafing through reports. “The others were found within hours of being dumped. I expected something by now.”
“Sparks could still be alive,” I said.
“So you believe in fairy tales?”
Belafonte had the tight-eyed stare of someone about to either scream, throw things, or both, and I set her on finding out all she could about Andy Delmont, né Dredd. And fast. I mainly needed to know where he lived. Mr Delmont and I were overdue for a long talk.
