29. Ethan
TWENTY-NINE
Ethan
Jensen’s hotel room is small and cheap and smells like a combination of bleach and mold. I don’t get it. If this is all he can afford, why wouldn’t he take Ruby’s payoff? She surely offered him more than his story could possibly be worth.
“Do you want to sit?” he asks, pulling out a chair at the rickety table. He’s wearing a green polo shirt and cheap dress pants.
“No, I don’t want to sit.”
Jensen pushes the chair back in. The table is covered in stacks of paper, some text, some images. There’s a notebook and a laptop.
“What do you want from me?” I ask.
I’m still standing just inside the closed door. The gun is in my waistband at the back, hidden by my black canvas jacket, but my hands are in my pockets. I won’t need the gun, not here, not with him.
Jensen’s fingers latch onto the back of the chair. “I want you to help me.”
“Why the hell would I help you?”
“Because of what they did to you.”
Ice water pours through me. I go still. I go silent.
Then I manage to say, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you want them to be punished?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jensen’s fingers whiten as he grips the back of the chair. “I left the church too. Like you. It was a smaller church, but it was still the same.”
It shows in his eyes for a second. It’s a flash, but I see it. I recognize it. The space that’s somehow hollow but also full of anger.
When I don’t reply, he says, “I have nothing on my own church, but I have something on High Castle. On John Clifford.”
“If it’s Clifford you’re after, then why have you been threatening me?”
“I haven’t been trying to threaten you. I’ve been trying to talk to you.”
“So you blackmailed me with that photo from ten years ago? And you must have taken that one of me outside the church.” I don’t mention Levi because I don’t want him dragged into this.
Jensen is shaking his head, denying my words even as I speak them.
“That picture outside the church wasn’t me.
And the one I sent you isn’t blackmail. But John Clifford thinks it is.
He’s got pictures of you even from boarding school.
He’s got a lot. Because he’s scared of what you know and what you might say. ”
Now I’m the one shaking my head. “I’ll never get to say anything. I’ll be dead, and so will you, and anything we’ve said will be twisted around into something else anyway. That’s what these people do.”
“That’s why we have to get ahead of them. If we work together—”
“There’s no we here. I’m not working with you. I want nothing to do with any of this.”
My phone starts vibrating inside my jacket. I slide my hand into my pocket and silence it.
Jensen presses, “Don’t you want them punished? Don’t you hate that they’ve gotten away with it?”
“You say you have nothing on your own church, but you have yourself. You could tell your story. But you don’t want to tell your story.
You want to tell mine. You want to hide comfortably behind it and let the spotlight and the questions fall on me.
You want to do that but still feel like you’re doing the right thing. ”
Jensen’s face hardens. “Clifford deserves to be exposed. And you weren’t his only victim—”
“I don’t give a shit about Clifford.”
“Why, because most of it was Paul?”
“Fuck you. Get the fuck out of my business. Go after the others if you want stories told. You’re after me because I’m high profile.
You’re not fucking righteous. You’re pretending to be, just like them.
Oh, look at my good fucking works, what a good goddamn Christian I am.
Fuck you. You’re not using me for that.”
Jensen scowls, not liking that. “That’s not what this is about. It’s very obvious that John Clifford killed Paul Castle.”
A humorless laugh escapes me. “Oh, is it? Is that what Grigson told you?”
“He said Clifford was a sinner and that he was involved in Paul’s death.”
“And how did Grigson supposedly know that?”
“He wasn’t clear on that. He was in and out of lucidity at the end.
But if Paul was about to confess what he and Clifford had both been doing, then Clifford had reason to silence him.
I need your help to expose Clifford. I need you to tell people what he did.
Why should he get away with it? And you’re not the only one he hurt. ”
A sudden, heavy weight presses down on me.
Jensen may be wrong about what happened to Paul, but he’s not wrong about exposing Clifford. He does deserve it.
But that’s not what would happen.
I would be the one exposed. I would be questioned, doubted, dissected. I would be under a fucking microscope, but nothing would happen to Clifford or Ruby or the church.
Of course, all of that’s assuming that I’m still alive to be speaking.
I would defend myself. That’s why I have the gun.
But I don’t think it will do me much good. John Clifford won’t attack me directly. I’ll get killed in a car wreck or something like that. I might overdose, so that there can be a big story about how my homosexuality was a gateway to other vices.
What I really need is for John Clifford to die.
I could kill him. I’ve thought about it plenty of times. But to do that, I would have to immerse myself again, fully, in that dark, awful space. I do that with my paintings, but it’s different. It’s private. I don’t think I could bear to rip my soul open like that in front of John Clifford.
Even though it would be the last thing he would see, I would have to carry that memory with me, and I can’t. I’m exhausted. I can’t handle one more ounce of weight.
My phone starts vibrating again. I silence it again. It’s probably Ruby. She’s trying to save this. She doesn’t like messes. She wants things tidy. And for all her wickedness, I don’t think she actually wants me to die. She would accept it, yes, but I don’t think she actively wants it.
There are many shades of evil.
Jensen presses, “John Clifford deserves to be punished.”
“I know,” I admit. “But I can’t do it. I just can’t.”
Jensen lets out a long, slow breath. I can see that he understands. That doesn’t mean he cares. That doesn’t mean he’ll keep me out of this.
But Ruby’s attempts to pay him off haven’t worked, and her threats haven’t worked. There’s nothing left to do but kill him or let him decide, and I’m not going to kill him.
Others, however, might.
“Be careful,” I warn him. “They’re dangerous because they think they’re immune. Not just because of their money and power but because they twist their religion around to tell themselves that they’re in the right.”
Jensen huffs in frustration. “That’s not what I’m trying to do, you know. Be like that. I’m not.”
“Then leave me out of it. Please.”
When my phone starts vibrating for a third time, I pull it out, intending to put Ruby on a permanent silence, but it’s not Ruby. It’s Patrick.
Shit.
Without another glance at Jensen, I hurry out the door, answering Patrick as I snap the door shut behind me.
Patrick barks in my ear, “Fucking finally!”
“What the fuck is going on?” I demand.
Patrick tells me as I make my way out of the hotel, and my blood is ice cold by the time I reach the street—because I know, I fucking know where Levi has gone.