Chapter Thirty-One #2
Instead, I fire into the floorboards at the foot of the stage.
The snake flinches, hisses, and slithers away, off the stage and into the shadows under the pews.
What is this snake doing here anyway? Did Ezra put it in the altar as a kind of booby trap?
It doesn’t matter, I tell myself. All that matters is getting out of here.
“Shit!” I shout. “Shit … shit…”
My hand shaking, I holster my gun and look again at my wrist. It’s bleeding, burning, already swelling, and I realize I don’t have much time. I’ll have to get the finger, get out to the cruiser, wake up Gavin, and make him drive me to the hospital.
I kneel in front of the stage, lean back behind the altar, thrust my hand inside, and yank out the jeans.
In the pocket, in a little plastic baggie, is a man’s severed finger.
Half rotten but, maybe, with just enough fingerprint left for Joel Shepherd to take as my half of the deal.
I jam the thing into my jacket pocket. Then, I’m about to grab my bag when I hear it.
CLACK.
The distinctive racked slide of a semiautomatic.
I turn.
Will Carpenter stands in the double doors, blocking my path outside, a Glock 17 in his hand. A cop gun, I realize. Almost certainly Gavin’s gun.
“Take out your gun,” Will says. “And drop it on the floor.”
I have to think he’s serious. His wispy brown curls are wild and windblown, the circles under his bloodshot eyes are deep and dark, and his pupils are blown. Whatever edge he’s gone over today, he’s not going to be talked back from it. Not right now. Maybe not ever.
And if he has Gavin’s gun, that means Gavin isn’t just asleep. Will must’ve drugged him. And he must’ve put the snake in the altar and lured me here to find it. If that’s the case, I think, he won’t hesitate to kill me. If that’s the case, he’ll either shoot me or stand there and watch me die.
My holster, clipped into the back of my jeans, is right-hand draw. And, even if I could somehow wrangle the gun loose with my left hand, I’m a right-hand shot.
“Do it,” he says. “Take out your gun. Drop it on the floor.” His hand trembles as he holds the Glock, but I don’t doubt he could hit me if he fired enough shots.
My wrist burns, the pain a sizzling, shimmering agony. But I will my hand around my back and under my jacket, as slow as I can. I get my half-numb fingers around the grip and take out the gun.
“Drop it,” he says.
“I’ve been bit by a snake,” I tell him. My voice doesn’t sound right. Like I’m in a tunnel.
“I know,” he says. “The Lord will decide your fate. It’s up to him whether you live or die. Now, drop it.”
Reluctantly, I obey. The lightning flashes. Or maybe it’s my vision.
He holds steady. My heart races, dangerously fast.
“I have to go to a hospital, Will,” I tell him.
But he shakes his head. Tears slide down his face but he keeps the gun trained on me.
“Kick your gun away,” he says. “Toward me.”
I try to do as he says, but my feet won’t move like they should. I manage to kick the gun, but it skitters away from both of us, under the nearest pew. He shakes his head but doesn’t try to get it. Dizzy, I stumble forward, unintentionally taking a couple of steps toward him.
“Sit down,” he says.
I try to convince myself, briefly, that I can charge him, take him by surprise, run to the cruiser. But then I feel my body waver again and I drop, sliding down the front of the altar.
“I’m sorry,” Will says.
“You don’t … look sorry,” I slur. I sound so far away from myself.
“You didn’t give me any choice,” he says, his voice choked with tears.
“What happened?” I ask. “What happened, Will?”
He grimaces as if in pain, and says, “Brother Ezra called me on Friday night. He sounded so scared. I’d never heard him like that.
He said he needed my help. He said that dangerous people—drug dealers—were angry with him for turning so many souls against their poison.
He said they sent someone to kill him but the Lord worked a miracle and the other man died instead—of a snakebite.
He said that the only way for him to escape this evil was to run. ”
“Run away,” I hear myself say.
“No,” he says. “He told me he wanted to go to Mexico, where he could save even more souls. But he needed my help.”
“How?” I ask.
“He wanted me to call Coroner Bradley … He—he needed the coroner to help him. To make it look official that it was Brother Ezra who died. And so he needed me.”
“Why you?” I ask. “Why…”
Will shakes his head, bites his bottom lip. Eventually he says, “Years ago, when I was … confused … No, sick. When I was sick, I fell into the temptations of sin with Roman Bradley.”
“The flower shop…” I say, remembering what Thelma had said about Will being so good at flower arrangements.
And the flower shop was adjoined to the funeral home.
So, he was there all the time, working for Diana Bradley, seeing Roman every day.
And then he’d shown up in the church one morning, crying his eyes out.
And been sent to conversion therapy. Thelma had said he was only fifteen.
“You were a just a kid,” I say.
“I was sick,” he says, softly. Then, with more venom, “I was sick. And Roman Bradley made me worse and … and Ezra made me better. Ezra healed me and so I … I owed him. I owed it to him to help him. I did what he asked. I called Coroner Bradley and told him that if he didn’t help Brother Ezra, I would tell everyone what had happened between us. ”
I think about what Bradley had said, the words I hadn’t understood at the time.
What I did … They’ll never forgive me. I never should’ve—Listen, will…”
Not Listen, will …
Listen. Will …
I think, in my half-delirious state, that Will Carpenter was what he’d wanted to say.
What he’d wanted to write in that note and couldn’t.
The confession he couldn’t make. The crime he knew would come out.
The loss of it all. Everything he’d worked for.
His pride, his work, his family, his place in the community. His kingdom.
Will says, “He was not a good man.”
And I don’t know whether he’s talking about Roman Bradley or Ezra King. And I realize it doesn’t matter. Both men used him, betrayed his trust in them, betrayed his love.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him. And I realize it’s true. Even after everything. I realize it’s true.
Lightning flashes. Thunder booms.
Outside, the rain begins to pour. Big, thumping drops smack the porch beyond the double doors.
“I don’t know…” he says. “I don’t know what’s right and wrong anymore.
I came here that night because I was worried about Brother Ezra and I saw him take money out of the altar.
Thousands and thousands of dollars. And I watched as he put the other man’s clothes inside.
I … I doubted him then. I remembered what it says in Luke, that even Satan can quote the scripture. ”