Chapter Twenty-Seven #2
I explain how Ezra faked his death using Nickels’s body. How he was either hiding out somewhere or left town but, for whatever reason, appeared at Dean Griffon’s house on Monday morning, Memorial Day, not long before Dishman and I arrived.
“And he … My father killed this man?” she asks. She doesn’t sound surprised or disappointed.
“I think so,” I tell her. “He would’ve been the one driving Nickels’s truck and it makes sense that he’d try to get into the RV, probably to retrieve the drugs we found traces of.”
Or, I think to myself, because he heard I was in town asking questions, and he wanted to get rid of the man who’d been helping him move drugs up and down the Southeast.
But I don’t tell Katie this. She’s the one who sent me here and I don’t want her feeling even a hint of guilt over Dean Griffon’s death, especially when it’s all just speculation anyway.
“After that,” I tell her, “I’m not sure where he went or what he was doing, but at some point, he realized that he needed to get back into the church.
And once we’d dug up his coffin and found it empty, and his parishioners started a twenty-four-seven vigil, he realized he couldn’t get back in without everyone seeing him. ”
And I explain, as gently as I can, how he likely manipulated a local girl into delivering his message.
“And while everyone was out…” Katie says, connecting the dots. “He snuck in. And that’s when … this coroner person? What was his name?”
“Roman Bradley,” I say. “I think he put it together the same way I did. Only, he would’ve started with all the information at hand.
He knew from the beginning that it wasn’t your father he was burying.
I think he probably knew that if Ezra was ever caught, he would lose everything.
His business, his position as coroner, his family …
It made him nervous. He realized the same thing I did about Ezra needing to get back into the church, but he got there first.”
I listen as Katie exhales out a long, tired sigh.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I know this isn’t … ideal.”
“You know what?” she says. “I’m not surprised.
Not after everything you’ve found out, but also, well, I remembered something.
Funny how that happens. I was in the shower and it just popped into my head.
I had this whoosh of memories … how my father would stay out for hours, late at night, always saying that he was visiting someone or ministering to someone or the like.
I don’t think my mother minded all that much after a certain point.
It was just like it would be later. Just me and her.
But, even when he was at home, it was often as if we didn’t exist. He’d watch TV or shut himself off in a room somewhere or go out on the porch and smoke and… ”
Her voice breaks and she sniffs and swallows and then says, “I often felt like I was invisible. Like there was a magical spell on me and my mom. One that made it so he couldn’t see us.
But then, when people were around, people from the congregation—or whenever we were standing around after church—he would pick me up and carry me and smile at me and sing to me and tell everybody how proud he was of his little girl and …
that felt magical. But not the good kind of magic.
I’m sorry, I know that probably doesn’t make sense. ”
“No,” I say, as she sniffs again. “I understand.”
She says, “I was so little. I think I really did believe it was a spell. And then, once we left, I didn’t think about it anymore.
I was happy when it was just me and my mom and I was happy when she married my stepdad.
He was very sweet and, over time, I forgot about the way my father had acted.
But then you told me about how he was supposed to appear on the mountaintop …
something about it … I remembered the way he’d been.
When we were in front of people, he was Father of the Year and he was so charismatic, so handsome, and with that voice …
Everyone just believed him. Believed in him. But … it was all just a show.”
I think over everything I’ve discovered about Ezra King since I arrived.
The discordance between who he seemed to be and what he’d been doing behind the scenes.
It was so much like what Thelma had told me on the porch that Memorial Day morning.
How she always felt like the snakes were just a show. A performance.
Katie takes another breath, has a drink of something, and then says, “That’s all that ever mattered to him.
The show. I think when he gambled and won, it must’ve been thrilling.
He must’ve felt like a star. But then, once my mother made him quit, he just traded one show for another.
One set of thrills for another. If we ever mattered before that, we didn’t after.
His whole life with us was just a pantomime, and when we left, he never even bothered to look for us. ”
And with the snakes, I think but don’t say, and the faith healing, he had new props. More compelling ones than a wife and daughter. He didn’t need to appear to be a loving husband and father when he seemed to wield a faith as powerful and entrancing as any Old Testament prophet.
“I worry,” she says very softly, “I worry that I’m like him. That I have the same … the same impulses. I worry about … about using my family the same way my father did.”
“I can’t imagine that,” I say.
“But it’s true. That day I came to see you…”
“What?” I ask. “What is it, Katie?”
“I had the baby with me because, yes, I was exhausted and sort of frenzied but also … I could’ve taken him to my friend Sandy’s house. She only lives a couple minutes away. She’d have been happy to watch him but … but I knew that if I had an infant with me, you’d be less likely to turn me down.”
I let out a surprised breath of a laugh.
“I don’t think it’s the same thing,” I tell her. But she doesn’t seem ready to hear it. Clearly wrestling with some big emotions, she emits a frustrated growl from the other end. Then I hear hard, thumping footsteps down a long hallway.
“Earlier today,” she says finally, “I conked out on the sofa and slept, really slept, for what felt like the first time in years. I had the dream again. I was standing in the church and I heard singing and then the hand appeared again. The same hand. It was glowing and everything. And it wrote that message on the wall. The king is dead. His kingdom is no more. But this time, all I could think in the dream was that … that things are finished. I guess, when you called just now and told me about his real, actual death, I didn’t feel that surprised.
I just felt like … like the show was over.
And now all I can think about is myself. My own … bad tendencies. My mistakes.”
“I—I feel like I should apologize,” I tell her. “I know what it is to wish your father were something else. To wish that things were different.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “I needed to know. I’m glad you got to the bottom of all this. Thank, you, Annie.”
“You’re welcome,” I tell her.
“Are you done now? Are you coming back to Louisville?”
“There are still a few loose ends I’d like to tie up,” I say.
“I’d like to know how Ezra convinced the coroner to go along with his plan.
And I’d like to know where he was between Friday night and Monday morning when he murdered Dean Griffon in that garage.
And, as much as anything, I’d like to know what he wanted out of that church. ”
I don’t tell her that I’m still hoping for a more solid connection to Joel Shepherd.
That I’d like to help Dishman uncover whatever remains of his operation.
That, because it was my presence in Mount Zion that kicked off a series of events which culminated in Ezra King’s and Roman Bradley’s deaths this morning, I feel guilty.
That I was sent here, like Daniel of the Bible, to interpret the writing on the wall and that, like him, I feel I can’t leave until I’ve finished it and told the truth.
“Let me know what you find out,” Katie says. “I want to know.”
We hang up and I go back into the bathroom, let the water out of the tub, spray fresh water from the shower onto my jeans. As I’m wringing them out, my phone buzzes.
“Hello?” I ask, not recognizing the number.
“Ma’am, it’s Gavin—er, Officer Alvey, I mean. Chief asked me to call you.”
“Is he—I mean, is everything okay?”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m still at the church. Chief’s on his way over here and knew he’d be driving through that dead zone out in Brimstone Holler so when I gave him the news, he told me to go ahead and call you.”
“What news?”
“Oh, we found Ezra King’s car. The car he drove to the church this morning? He wanted me to let you know. Figured you’d be interested.”