A Sounding Brass (5 page)

“No, at home, but I’m logged in to the interface. I wanted to get some stuff ready for the wiretap girls tomorrow.”

“Can you get on the server and e-mail me one of the .wav files in the Brandon Boanerges folder?”

“Sure, but can’t you log in from there?”

“Nah, I’m in this tiny motel where there’s only a dialup. I don’t want to take the time to drive down to the local PD and
use their connection.”

“With the dial-up at a motel, it’s probably faster to take the drive than wait for it to download. But yeah, whatever you
need.”

Briefly, Ray tuned him out as the bluegrass song came to an end and something schmaltzy and slow came on. That was good. Another
three minutes.

“—it going?”

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, how’s it going with the rape case? The papers here aren’t picking it up, and Julia’s going nuts waiting for news.”

“I’m wrapped, but the girls still have to testify. The D.A. tried to cut this Phinehas guy a deal—twenty-five to life—but
he turned it down. He honestly believes these women were making some kind of voluntary sacrifice to keep him preaching. Has
no belief he’s committed a crime. The guy puts the
i
in
twisted
.”

“Is the defense going to put him on the stand?”

“I suppose, if Ortega doesn’t get fired first. I wouldn’t put it past this Phinehas guy to believe he can defend himself.”

“More likely he’ll use the opportunity to preach. You might warn the D.A. that this kind of personality likes to grandstand,
particularly if the gallery is full of good folk wearing black.”

“Which it is. I’ll give him a call tonight, after I listen to this file. Is it on its way yet?”

“I just hit Send. Give it a minute. It’s less than a megabyte.”

“Thanks, Ross.”

“Any hints what this is about?”

“I just heard something that rang a bell, that’s all.”

“Your bells are as good as other people’s fire alarms. See you.”

Ray hung up and pulled his laptop out of the backpack. In a couple of minutes, he had downloaded the sound file of Brandon
Boanerges, whom they’d picked up on the phone during his last con job. Ray had a good ear for sounds, whether it was music,
birds, or people’s voices. Some people remembered names, some visual details, but he was a sound guy.

“Send my love back, doubled,”
Claire’s husky voice murmured in his memory. Ray shook his head, as if to dislodge it.

Boanerges had made a brief career of conning women into relationships or even bogus marriages, being added to their bank accounts,
draining said accounts, and skipping town. Unfortunately, the ladies were too embarrassed or too shy to press charges. One
of them, however, had been sentimental—or cynical—enough to tape a number of their conversations, and being the kind of guy
he was, Ray had converted one or two of the files to digital format to keep on the OCTF server. You just never knew when you
might need something like that.

The third song ended and the DJ came back on the air. “That last track by Jars of Clay was dedicated to Linda Bell, who runs
a terrific Christian daycare right here in Hamilton Falls. She has a price far above rubies, and I’m not talking about her
rates. Now we’ll take a break and hear from our sponsors.”

Ray flipped the radio off and opened the sound file.

“I can’t wait to come home to you, Barbara,” Brandon Boanerges crooned into the phone in exactly the tone Luke Fisher had
used in talking about Linda the daycare lady. “You’re the woman I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

Exactly the same tone. Ray didn’t need voiceprint software to tell him what his ears had already confirmed.

His informant hadn’t been far off. Brandon Boanerges was alive and well, and playing Jesus rock in Hamilton Falls.

* * *

AT PRAYER MEETING
Wednesday night, Claire was thrilled to note that Luke Fisher was seated right in the first row. She also noted that on the
other side of the aisle, the first row was packed with single women and widows.

Mentally rolling her eyes, Claire took her usual seat seven rows back. When Derrick Wilkinson slid in beside her, he elbowed
her in the ribs.

“Everyone who’s on the market is up there in front,” he whispered. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Pride,” she whispered back. “I hear it’s a sin. If you want a wife without any, go sit up there yourself.”

He grinned and sat back, opening his Bible to a random chapter. She’d known Derrick her whole life, knew his weaknesses and
his strengths. Among the former was his ambition to be Elder. What a shame the Wilkinsons hadn’t been among the families who,
at the turn of the last century, had first accepted the gospel in the valley and given food and shelter to the itinerant Shepherds.
If they had, Derrick might have been an Elder by now. As it was, his social aspirations had pretty much come to a screeching
halt.

He could always offer to go out as a Shepherd, and Claire often wondered why he didn’t. He had a dead-end job as a paralegal
at the only law firm in town, and he wasn’t getting any younger. He was a decent guy, but this single-minded pursuit of the
favored family girls hadn’t done his reputation much good among the singles. Who wanted to go into a marriage knowing she
was just a consolation prize?

After the first hymn and a prayer by Owen Blanchard, the congregation drew its collective breath as Luke Fisher got up and
made his way to the podium.

“People of God, thank you for allowing me to come back and talk to you again.” His smile was like that of a child at Christmas.
Or at least Claire thought so—the Elect didn’t celebrate Christmas, so she couldn’t be totally sure. She’d seen plenty of
happy kids at birthday parties, though, and Luke Fisher looked as though he’d been given the very best gift of his life.

“I feel as though I’ve never left. That sense of oneness is still here, giving me confidence that the Spirit is working among
us.

“I give thanks today for those of you who called me at the station to encourage me, and even offered song suggestions. I can
tell you right now that your participation in that ministry has borne fruit. In one hour alone, callers pledged almost a thousand
dollars to help in God’s work.”

Joyfully, he gestured as if to encourage applause, and people looked at one another uncertainly. No one applauded in Gathering.
It was worldly. The gathering of God’s people wasn’t like a rock concert, now, was it?

“Now, I know we’ve been taught that the right hand shouldn’t know what the left is doing, and our giving should be in secret
so our Father can reward us openly,” he went on. “But I’m committed to keeping this ministry open to the scrutiny of everyone.
Anyone can give, and anyone can know where the fruit of people’s generosity is going. So I’ll tell you now that the money
is going straight back into the ministry, for music and equipment, to start. Our goal is to buy a van for a mobile station,
so we can take our message on the road, to county fairs and other places, so that others can hear the Good News we know in
our hearts to be true.

“My friends,” he went on earnestly, “we can no longer minister to ourselves. The world is crying out for help. We can no longer
be in this world but not of it—we need to mix with the publican and the sinner as Jesus did, and tell them His joyful message.”

He paused, and the congregation waited breathlessly. “I’ve spent a long time in prayer over this,” he said, “and so have your
elders, Owen Blanchard and Mark McNeill. It’s been laid on our hearts that God’s people need to lower the barriers of separation
between themselves and the world. By this we mean things like our appearance.”

“What?” Derrick murmured, and Claire gazed at him with the same question in her eyes. This was impossible. Their clothes and
hair were counted unto them for righteousness. If that were taken away, wouldn’t they be in danger of a lost eternity?

Who were they going to believe—the Shepherds who had shown them the way and the truth, or Luke Fisher? In the next moment,
that question was answered.

“Phinehas, as you all know, has been the senior Shepherd in Washington for nearly forty years. He has always made sure that
God’s people upheld the external standard. But folks, if what the police believe is true, Phinehas has been deceiving us about
his character for just as long a time.” The audience shifted uncomfortably, and a quick glance to the side told Claire that
Derrick was on the point of speaking out in protest. “So, if Phinehas’s character and service has proven to be faulty, who’s
to say that his insistence on the traditions of men aren’t equally faulty? How much of Phinehas’s ministry can we trust?”

Derrick could stand it no longer. He leaped to his feet. “Phinehas has not been proven guilty! Until he is, God’s people should
stand by him. And by the standards he upholds.”

Claire frowned. One of the women accusing Phinehas of rape was Dinah, whom gossip reported Derrick had hoped to make his wife.
Was he now accusing her of lying? He couldn’t have it both ways. But of course, there was no way Claire could stand up and
say that, because women were supposed to keep silent in the church.

Luke looked down at Derrick from the microphone. “God’s people should try the spirits. That’s all I’m saying. Would it please
God more for us to reach out in brotherhood to others, or to spend our time worrying about how we look?”

Which is exactly what Claire thought every time she fought with her hair on a Sunday morning. But oddly, she didn’t feel comforted
that their temporary leadership had voiced her unspoken thoughts. Instead, she just felt uneasy.

Change was a disturbing thing.

A
T THE TAIL END
of her lunch hour the next day, Claire saw the newspaper lying on the table in the break room. She turned to the County section,
where Phinehas’s case was being reported in all its shocking details. A quick scan of the two columns told her Tamara and
Dinah had both held up steadily under the defense’s questions, and it was practically a foregone conclusion that Phinehas
would go to prison. But apparently he was to go on the stand himself today or tomorrow, so who knew what would happen.

Personally, Claire thought Phinehas was as guilty as could be and no more deserved his congregation restored to him than Dinah
had deserved his abuse all these years. But she was keeping her thoughts to herself. The Elect were taking sides—and so passionately
that just having people over for dinner was becoming a risky proposition.

Her manager stuck her head in the break-room door and Claire closed the paper hastily. “I was just coming.”

Margot Emerson glanced at the paper. “Reading about the court case?”

“Yes.”

“What do your people think?”

“My . . . people?” The topic of her religion never came up at work. Claire did her job well, got along with her coworkers,
and always had a welcoming smile for the new clients. The bank wasn’t entitled to know or ask about her faith.

“Yes.” Margo walked beside her back to her desk, which faced the street door. “The folks in your church.”

Was this some kind of trick question? “It’s pretty clear he deceived a lot of people for a long time,” she answered cautiously.
It was safe to say something like that to Margot—she wasn’t likely to turn up at the dinner table of anyone Claire knew.

“Can I talk to you for a minute, Claire?”

Claire glanced at her desk, where a couple of new-account applications sat ready for processing. Her workload hadn’t been
very heavy lately, and with all the customers in the line, she should really put her old teller hat back on and give the other
girls a hand. “There’s a lot of traffic today and—”

“Just for a moment. Five minutes.”

Well, Margot was her boss. It wasn’t like she was going to write her up for slacking off.

Claire followed her into her office and closed the door as the other woman went around the desk and sat. Then she sank into
the guest chair in front of it. “What’s up?”

Margot folded her hands and took a moment, as if she were arranging words in her head before she said them. “Claire, you know
you’re a valued member of our team, don’t you?”

She didn’t, actually. She hadn’t been in her new position all that long, so she hadn’t seen an evaluation yet. “Thank you.
I’m glad to hear it.”

“Your numbers are good, your rapport with the customers is good . . . for the most part.”

“My rapport with them is always good,” Claire protested. “Why, has someone complained?”

Margot looked at her hands again, still clasped on the desk, then raised her gaze. “How committed are you to the . . . how
should I put this . . . external standards of your religion?”

The way she looked on the outside was a natural outgrowth of the sacrifice that she was making on the inside, but that was
a little difficult to explain to an Outsider. “What do you mean?” she said at last.

“I mean your dress and the way you have your hair styled.”

Claire touched the smooth chignon at the nape of her neck—the one that had taken thirty agonizing minutes to beat into submission
this morning. Talk about sacrifice. She didn’t know a single Elect woman for whom her hair wasn’t as heavy a cross as any
Jesus had had to bear.

Which took her back to what she’d heard at Gathering last night. After Luke Fisher had dropped his bomb about the possibility
that the standards for appearance might change, people had gone away in little groups, talking a mile a minute. Nothing would
happen right away, of course. It would take prayer and fasting and probably several levels of discussion among the elder Shepherds.

In fact, she probably wouldn’t see changes like that in her lifetime. Unfortunately.

But Margot was still looking at her. “Would you consider changing your look a little? Wearing something other than black,
for instance, and getting a stylish cut?”

She stared at her manager, for once in her life completely speechless. This conversation was illegal. You couldn’t reprimand
someone for how they looked. Besides, it wasn’t as if she were wearing a nose ring and flaunting her midriff in public. She
wore business suits and high-necked blouses, for goodness sake. What was going on in Margot’s head?