Chapter Three
THREE
brADLEY FUNERAL HOME, AN old Victorian house, is perched high on a grassy hill, right next to the smaller, more modern-looking Mount Zion Florist. A set of white-painted steps leads up to both buildings from a sidewalk out front.
I park Honey next to a white van with the words COUNTY CORONER emblazoned on the side and start to climb the staircase but, on just the third step up, I hear the side door open and see a man exiting the building, carrying a bag and heading straight toward me.
“Excuse me!” I say as I meet him on the steps.
He turns with a start, as if he hadn’t noticed my presence until that moment. Of medium height and build and very suntanned, with wavy dark-blond hair, he pulls his sunglasses up onto the top of his head and looks down at me.
“Yes?” he says, with a questioning smile that’s almost a smirk.
I blink at him, realizing I’ve been stunned by a sort of seventies Robert Redford quality: a weird, dazzling nonchalance. His eyes are a startling shade of blue-green and his lashes are the long, black, lush type that my mother always fawned over.
“Are you Roman Bradley?” I ask, recovering myself. “The county coroner?”
“Yeah,” he says, starting toward the van again. “That’s me. Is this an emergency?”
“Um—”
I jog the rest of the way beside him and watch as he tosses his bag onto the passenger seat of the long van. Before he can escape, I push my ID at him and say, “I just need to ask you a couple of questions about Ezra King.”
“King?” he says, with surprise.
“His daughter hired me,” I say. “She’s a little concerned about the speed of his arrangements, the lack of autopsy, and—”
“Are you questioning my professional integrity?” he asks. He crosses his arms in front of his chest and gives me a stern look, but there’s a hint of amusement in his voice.
“No,” I say, taking a step closer. “But questions are involved. Look, I promise it won’t take long. I’ve already got the police report from Chief Dishman so—”
“Really,” Bradley says. “I’m sorry, but there’s been a three-car pileup out on the edge of town and unfortunately I’m needed at the scene.”
He fishes a set of keys out of his pocket and walks around to the driver’s side of the van, opens it, and says, “It’s the holiday weekend and that, unfortunately, means I’m working overtime. Come back on Tuesday, okay? During normal business hours.”
He hops up into the driver’s seat, revs the engine, gives me a little wave, and then peels away, disappearing over the other side of the hill.
I let out a growl and glance at my watch.
“Well, shit.”
I look one last time at the funeral home and florist beside it and then get back behind Honey’s wheel.
“What do you think, Honey?” I ask. “Time to pay a visit to Mount Zion Church of the Healing Redeemer?”
Honey rumbles her assent. I put the address into my phone and head down the other side of the hill, toward the southeastern side of town. Closer to the Gorge and deeper into the hills, the humidity rises along with a very specific smell. Rotten eggs.
“Sulfur,” I mutter, passing a sign that aptly says brIMSTONE HOLLOW.
“Geez,” I say, wrinkling my nose as I pull Honey around the twisty back road that winds through what I’m sure are fumes from a sulfur spring.
The scent gets stronger the deeper into the hollow I travel.
The trees to either side of the road are huge, their overhanging branches casting shadows of the twisted canopy overhead.
The only time the road isn’t completely covered by the canopy, it’s because one side is too steep for dense growth.
In those places, the sunnier side reveals a steep drop-off down the hill, bordered only by an ancient-looking guardrail.
I keep steady, pushing through the claustrophobic tunnel of trees, twisty hairpin turns, and the stifling brimstone air.
After what feels like forever, I suck in a deep breath of fresher air as we emerge from the hollow onto a climbing stretch of cracked gray asphalt. It winds and twists higher onto the mountain, until suddenly my GPS says, “Your destination is on the left.”
And, if my phone hadn’t warned me, I realize I would’ve driven right past it.
The church is situated about thirty feet up the hill, accessible only by a gravel drive that leads to a gravel lot, which is empty.
I pull into the lot, park, and get out. The church is bright white with a little white steeple and—at a squeeze—looks like it could maybe hold eighty or a hundred people.
I walk up the little steps and yank on the door.
Locked. Just for good measure, I knock and wait.
“Nobody here,” I mutter.
I walk around the church and find a little parsonage set about twenty feet back, tucked halfway into the tree line. The windows are dark and there’s no vehicle out front. I climb the porch steps and knock anyway, but there’s no sign of life.
Was this Ezra King’s house? I wonder to myself.
I try to peer in the windows, but all the curtains are pulled.
Standing on the porch, I turn from the house and look across the hillside.
I can just make out the shape of a tall stone cross.
I step down from the porch and jog across the road to find the church’s cemetery.
The gravestones are small and humble, some of them going back to the 1890s.
One grave is brand new with clear marks where the sod has been removed and then neatly replaced.
I assume this must be the grave of Katie’s father.
There’s been no time yet, I guess, to have a stone carved.
I need to understand him, Katie had said. So I can understand myself.
I look back at the church as a long-ignored memory bubbles to the surface.
A summer of anxiety, fear, faith, and realization.
Flashes of remembrance develop with crystal clarity in my mind.
The huge white tent, the grass itch on my legs, the smell of perfume and sweat.
I’d been looking for a greater power and found, instead, a fearful thing. Fearful then. And now.
I try to dismiss the memory but, in doing so, another one emerges: Early in my Air Force time.
Late at night. Just a few miles from base, sitting at a table strewn with empties.
I was still in Security Forces, not yet recruited to Special Investigations.
Tina and I had gone out with a group, but, by that time of night, it was only the two of us left.
“What about your folks?” Tina asked.
“Still back home in Cleberg County,” I said. “Still together, as far as I know.”
“You said your dad, well … You said they fought a lot so I just sort of wondered—” Tina started, then waved her own question off like shooing a fly.
I half laughed into my drink, fresh milk with ice.
“No,” I said. “It’s okay. Yeah, they’re still together. Except for one long-ass summer when I was a kid, they’ve never managed to stay apart.”
“What happened?” she asked. “That summer, I mean.”
“My mom took off. I stayed with my dad. But, eventually … she came back.”
“So, they love each other?” Tina asked, a little slurred. She always did (and still does) get mushy when she’s had a few. I was glad I’d elected to drive. Once she got this deep in her cups, it was only a matter of time until Sleepy Tina took over.
I knocked back the rest of my milk so the ice cubes hit my teeth and my lips burned with cold.
“I don’t know,” I said. “They’re dangerous for each other.”
“Dangerous?”
“Yeah, like … combustible. Explosive.”
“Like sodium and water,” Tina said. And, when I scrunched my face in confusion she added, “Remember? From chemistry?”
“I think you had a better chemistry teacher than I did,” I said.
She rolled her eyes and said, “You put them together and kaboom!”
An explosive gesture erupted from her hands, but when she looked at me, she frowned. “You’re saying they loved the explosions?”
I leaned back in my chair and stared at her big, empty hands. “I think they both loved that an explosion was always possible. They both got a thrill out of living dangerously.”
“Not a great environment for a kid,” Tina said. “It’s a good thing you didn’t inherit any of that.”
Shaking my head now, clearing the memory as much as I can, I get up and walk back down the hill toward Honey.
“Let’s go,” I say to her. Then, I pause as I open the driver’s-side door, and read a little white marquee I’d missed on the way in. It features only the name of the church and the service times. Every Wednesday evening at six PM. Every Sunday morning at nine AM. Every Sunday night at seven PM.
I slide behind the wheel and rev the engine.
“We’ll come back tonight,” I say. “When there’s more here besides ghosts and bad memories.”