Dominion (87 page)

“It was just a finger.”

“Finger’s on your hand, right?”

Clarence looked down at his hand. “Yeah.”

“The officer felt you were a risk since you were agitated and you’re so big.”

“Or since I’m so black?”

“You know, Clarence, you’re not a fun guy to try to help. Anybody ever tell you that? Manny and I, we’re both concerned for you so we try to get some info that might be helpful, while you just make it worse for yourself by justifying your stupidity.”

“I didn’t do it!”

“Didn’t do
what?
Mess with the girl? Do the drugs? I believe you. But did you yell at the police officer? Poke him in the chest? So what do you expect? He told Manny at first he was going to cut you some slack. Till he saw how you acted and he found the stuff on you.”

“He arrested me.”

“He was doing his job If you’d cooperated, there would’ve been no handcuffs and you could’ve just walked out the door with him. But that was too easy, huh? Well, let me welcome you to the slow cogs of American justice,” Ollie said, getting up to leave. “I hope they move faster for you than they did for me.”

“Ollie, wait,” Clarence said. “I’m sorry. I really appreciate your help. Look, sit down, would you? Talk to me. Is there anything more on Dani’s case? Like with the license plate?”

“Lucky for us, Motor Vehicles is way behind and hasn’t sent the permanent plates yet.” Ollie took out his notepad and flipped a few pages. “They’ll be delivered to a Mr. Rafer Thomas in L.A. One of my cop buddies down there went and checked him out. He was real cool. Said there must be a mistake. Doesn’t know anything about a Mercedes. The guy has a Crip history, and you can bet he’s a friend or relative of one of our guys. I sent down a PI to check out his family. Ray Eagle.”

“You sent Ray?”

“Yeah. He does a good job, ex-cop you know. But he’s the one that called me. He’s doing it for free.”

“For free?”

“We can’t afford to hire PIs. But since Ray volunteered to help you, I said sure. He flew down this morning. Motor Vehicles is going to send the plates through to Rafer Thomas tomorrow. Ray’s going to be on surveillance, watching the mailbox. When the plates come, wherever Thomas goes, Ray goes.”

An official-looking, brisk-walking woman escorted Clarence into a plain, colorless room. It was quiet, deathly quiet, conspicuously lacking life’s background noises. Only one door came into the room. There was no other way to get out. On one wall was a mirror. Clarence supposed it was a two-way mirror. He wondered what invisible eyes were watching him.

Nick Sirianni, Grant Bowles’s young partner, sat in a chair off to the side. Nick seemed nervous, his eyes darting around the room. Clarence wondered if this was the right move after all.

“Please be seated, Mr. Abernathy,” a middle-aged, accountant-like man said. Clarence sat uncomfortably in the chair. It seemed fashioned for a five-foot four-inch, 120-pound woman. The man started to strap a tube around his chest.

“What’s that?” Clarence asked.

“A pneumograph tube.”

“What does it do?”

“Just relax, Mr. Abenathy. It monitors your breathing.”

A female assistant put a blood-pressure cuff around his right arm. She pumped it, and he felt it close in around him.

“Turn your hand up, please.” She put electrodes on his fingers and the surface of his hand. He felt like a serial killer about to be electrocuted.

They set up a microphone in front of him. He wanted to ask if this was going to be taped, but he didn’t want to sound defensive.

Why is it so hot in here?

He wiped his face with a handkerchief, self-consciously, feeling as if he was being studied like a lab rat. At an overly neat desk sat a white man with the calm measured voice of a scientist studying a specimen. “What is your name?” he asked him.

“Clarence Abernathy.” He paused just before he said it, afraid that by saying it wrong he would appear to be a liar. It was irrational, he knew. But it was as if he were on trial for every black man who’d ever lived. If they thought O. J. got away with something, they’d make sure he didn’t.

The man asked him question after question. “Do you know Gracie Miller?”

“Yes.” Why did he feel guilty? Of course he knew her. He met her on assignment.

“Did you give illegal drugs to Gracie Miller?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Have you taken drugs in the last week?”

“No,” he said, but then he realized the man hadn’t said “illegal” this time. He thought about his insulin. Was that considered a drug? Should he qualify his answer? Too late. His interrogator had moved on to another question.

Several other questions followed and then, there it was. “Did you have sexual relations with Gracie Miller?”

“No!” He said it louder than he meant to. He felt agitated at this whole process. He wanted to be done with this nonsense and get out of this cage. Without showing any expression the man at the neat desk studied the physiological changes as they were transmitted through a small panel unit and into the synchronized readings on the moving graph paper. Later he would take these parallel graphs and correlate and interpret them to determine whether Clarence was lying. But already he was drawing his conclusions, Clarence felt sure.

The interrogator repeated several earlier questions, including whether Clarence took drugs and had sex with Gracie Miller. Half an hour later, they unhooked him from the devices.

“You’re free to go now, Mr. Abernathy.”

Clarence walked out with his lawyer. “That was so weird,” Clarence said to him. “I just told the truth, but I feel like I blew it.”

“You did fine,” Nick said. “Don’t worry about it.”

“They sit in judgment over truth,” Torel said, “but Elyon alone knows everything, sees every heart, records every action. He is the rewarder of those who embrace truth and the punisher of those who embrace falsehood. Truth brings its own rewards, sometimes in the Shadowlands, but always in heaven.”

“I realize now,” Dani said, “sometimes I put more value on the rewards in that world than those reserved for this one.”

“Earth’s treasures are easily destroyed,” Torel said. “If a person’s treasures are on earth, death is the ultimate tragedy, for it separates him from his treasures. Every day brings him closer to death, and therefore every day moves him farther from what he treasures. Jesus said to lay up your treasures in heaven, so that every day on earth, as you get closer to leaving that world, you are headed
toward
your treasures instead of away from them. He who is headed away from his treasures has reason to despair. He who is headed toward his treasures has reason to rejoice.”

Dani nodded. “No wonder so many there live lives of despair instead of joy.”

“Do you recall the story Jesus told,” Torel asked, “about using your resources on earth to gain friends in heaven so that when your life there was done you would be welcomed into eternal dwellings? What you did during your life on earth made special friends for all eternity, friends eager to open their homes to you in heaven. People you helped and discipled and shared your faith with, they will invite you to their dwellings in the heavenly city. You will share meals together, make music and celebrate, and tell great stories of old.”

“I can hardly wait for that, Torel.”

“There will be others too you still haven’t met. Those you influenced without even knowing it by your godly example, by your letters, your phone calls. Those you reached through your art, the lives you touched in your church and Bible studies, and the lives in turn that they touched, lives you don’t even know yet. Those to whom you brought the truth—like when you gave a book to one person who passed it on to another, and she to another. There are people you talked to on a bus, waitresses, a woman who cut your hair. The child of the woman who cut your hair. The friend of that child. There is an effect like dominos falling, one touching the next, which touches the next, and so on. When you gave your time and money to the poor and to reach people with the gospel, these were investments that will bear eternal returns. Here you will always be thankful for every minute of worship, every hour of prayer, every dollar you gave to further the cause of Christ. People will come to your home and say ‘thank you,’ and they will open their homes to you, and you will hear their stories. Perhaps you may go back over time and space and relive their adventures with them.”

“If only I’d understood this on earth. It would have been a great motivator. It would have changed the way I lived.”

Clarence arrived at Bowles & Sirianni at ten the next morning. He sat down in the office of Grant Bowles.

“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, Clarence.”

“What?” Clarence caught his breath.

“You failed the polygraph,” Grant said. Clarence sat motionless, staring at nothing. “The examiner says your responses indicate you weren’t telling the truth. At least not on the key subjects of doing drugs and having sex with Miss Miller.”

“But I
was
telling the truth. I’m innocent!”

“Clarence, listen, I’m your attorney. It’s my job to defend you, and I’m going to do everything in my power to get you off. Anything you say to me is entirely confidential under attorney/client privilege. I cannot, I will not divulge it to anyone.”

“Why are you saying all this?”

“Because I have to ask you. Are you
sure
you never did heroin or had sexual relations with Gracie Miller?”

Clarence stared vacantly into his attorney’s eyes. He got up, walked out of the room, and headed for the elevator, ignoring the voice behind him. “Clarence, we’re not done. We have to talk.”

Clarence drove straight to the Justice Center. As he went up the elevator, for the first time he knew exactly what was going on in all those floors where the elevator wouldn’t stop. He sat down with Ollie and told him about failing the polygraph.

“I wish you’d told me this before,” Ollie said. “I never recommend taking a polygraph.”

“Why? I wasn’t lying.”

“I know that. But the lie detector has a basic flaw—it doesn’t detect lies. It detects stress. It records blood pressure, pulse rate, respiration. That’s not the same as recording truth and lies. I rarely use polygraphs anymore. I’ve seen people I know for a fact are guilty pass them. I’ve seen people I know are innocent fail them. They’re right the great majority of the time, of course, but that’s no consolation when they’re wrong.”