Father of Lies (7 page)

She stops again, seems to hesitate.

“You are not going to excommunicate me?” she asks.

“I don't know,” I say, preparing her for my own purposes. “It all depends on how well you are willing to obey. You have to make a choice. Will you embrace God or the devil?” I gently ask.

She looks at my shoes, my belt, but will not lift her eyes to meet mine.

“You need two men for a proper blessing,” she says.

“Yes,” I say. “Sure. Technically, I do. But nobody else is here.”

“It's okay?” she asks.

“God will fill the gap,” I say. “He is the other person. There are two people in me—myself and God. We will bless you together.”

It takes additional prodding to convince her of my good intentions, but in the end I am suave enough to manage it. I seat her on the rock. Going around behind her, I put one hand on each shoulder.

“State your full name,” I say.

She tells me. I pour onto her head anointed oil from my pocket flask. I lay my hands upon her head and in God's name begin to bless her.

I bless her that she will not hate her brother, poor sinner that he is, and that she will worry only about her own sins. I bless her that
she will know in God's eyes she is a daughter of goodness and that he loves her. I tell her that there is enough of God's grace even for the blackest of sinners and that, if she will hold to his path and not sway, God will save her, but she must trust God's chosen provost. In other words, me.

“Perhaps God's anointed will sometimes ask you to do things you do not understand or that you might at first think are wrong. You must trust him and do all he says without hesitation. Complete obedience is the only path to heaven. You must listen to your provost and follow his guidance in all things, and share nothing of what goes on privately between you and he. Not because it is secret or wrong, but because it is sacred.”

I am going on in such fashion, laying her bare for my own purposes, when a refined and different logic begins to thump about my skull.

What do you want by associating yourself with a sinner of this pitch?

But I am a sinner myself, I respond. We are all of us sinners.

What might be sin to lesser people is no sin to you. Were what you do sin, God would have plucked you from your sacred office long ago. It must be no sin.

Surely inspired words straight from the Holy Spirit.

You may call me that.

I thought I had lost your guidance.

You'll never lose me.

The girl is becoming uncomfortable below me, shifting her head beneath the weight of my hands. I start to spout aloud again, letting the blessing flow where it will of its own accord, listening to the other thoughts swelling within me.

Don't soil yourself with this girl. She's committed the carnal act with her brother.

It wasn't her fault.

You need to save her.

How can I save her when I can't save myself?

The girl squirms again. I keep babbling and raise my voice higher. I fix my eyes on her bare neck.

Christ's blood will not wash her clean. She must atone for her sins with her own blood. Killing her is the best thing for her. Kill her to save her.

“I can't do it,” I say. “I've never killed one before.”

“Hunnh?” the girl says.

I am not asking you. I am commanding you.

“How do I know you are the Holy Spirit?”

“Are we finished?” the girl says.

Who else could I be?

“How do I know you are not the devil?”

“Who are you talking to?” the girl asks, her panic rising.

Examine me.

A vague figure flashes momentarily through my vision, a personage of white, an angel of light. Before I can get a closer look, it is gone.

“It's murder,” I say, but there is no answer.

The girl struggles to rise. My hands slip off her head and down around her neck. I hold her until she is screaming and then I knock her head once hard against the rock. Her head turns odd and misshapen, losing form on one side. I pray privately for strength and am given it. I twist her neck until I am sure she is dead, and strip her of her clothes.

And then I rearrange her a bit so that her body will accommodate the spirit better. And then I go away.

CHAPTER 2

Breakfast

I embrace my wife. Kiss her on the cheek. She smiles limply before returning her attention to the stove.

I go to the table and sit down at the head of it, where the father is meant to sit. At the other end are my oldest and youngest children, the youngest in her high chair, the older girl feeding her.

“How's my pumpkin flower today?” I ask.

“Oh, Daddy!” says my eldest. She seems pleased and embarrassed, will not meet my gaze. She will grow into a real beauty, prettier even than the girl in the woods. I will be around to enjoy every minute of it.

My wife comes to table, sets before me a plate covered with a paper towel. Underneath it are strips of bacon, six, lined side by side, grease still bubbling upon them.

The twins come down the stairs together, stumbling over one another's feet.

“Good to see you, boys,” I say heartily.

They look at each other and smirk.

“What is it?” I ask.

“Nothing,” they say, both of them at once.

My wife brings the frying pan over to the table, begins dishing eggs overcooked and sticky with cheese onto the plates. She finishes, returns the pan to the stove, comes to sit down, tightening the sash of her bathrobe.

“Jack?” I say to one of the twins.

“What?” he asks.

“You know what,” I say, making a show of pressing my palms together.

“Oh,” he says. “Oh yeah.”

He bows his head, stiffens his hands, the rest of us following.

“Our Father in Heaven,” he prays. “Thank you for my family. Please bless the food. In the name of the Lamb, amen.”

By the time I open my eyes, Jack has already grabbed his fork and started into his eggs, a long thread of cheese strung to his plate. He is a glutton. I will have to teach him to control his appetites or they will have the best of him.

“Has anyone seen the paper?” I ask.

“Jack, fetch your father the paper,” says my wife.

“Why do I always have to do it?” Jack says. “I already had to say the prayer.”

“Mark, get your father the paper,” says my wife.

“Aww, Mom,” says the other twin.

“Do as you're told, Mark,” I say. “Don't talk back to your mother.”

He gets up mumbling and stomps out of the room.

“Is anything wrong with the eggs?” my wife asks.

“No,” I say. “Quite the contrary. These eggs are delicious.”

“Don't feed me that,” she says, frowning. “You haven't even tasted them.”

I am considering how to respond in a way that will assert my authority when Mark returns with the paper, dropping it in my lap on the way past.

“There's your stupid paper,” he says.

“Is that any way to talk to your father, Mark?” my wife asks.

Mark shrugs without looking at her. He climbs into his chair, begins to eat his eggs. I roll the rubber band off the newspaper, flatten the pages on the table. On the front page is a blurred spread of the girl's body, the privates, neck, and eyes marked out in solid black triangles. “Murder in the Woods” the headline reads.

“I think you should apologize,” my wife says to Mark.

“No,” I say. “That's okay. Maybe I shouldn't have made him get it.”

My wife turns to me, looks at me hard. I gesture with my eyes down to the newspaper, turn the headline to face her way. She squints, examines it a moment, her pupils moving down the column.

“Oh my God,” she says, and folds the paper closed.

“Mom!” says our eldest.

“Dad, Mom swore!” says Jack. “Don't swear, Mom.”

“Not far from here,” I say softly to my wife. “Just in the woods behind Barton's field. I'll have to go talk with the parents.”

“Dad, who are you talking about?” says our eldest.

“Nothing,” I say.

“I'm sorry I swore, Jack,” my wife says. “It just came out.”

“I think you should wash your mouth out with soap,” says Mark.

“Mark,” I say, “that's enough.”

“Well, I do,” he says.

“How old was she?” my wife whispers.

“Fourteen, I think,” I say. I make a point of bringing my eggs onto my fork and pushing the fork into my mouth. “Yes, fourteen,” I say.

“You guys just aren't making any sense,” says Jack.

“We're not talking to you, Jack,” I say.

“Who are you talking about?” my eldest yells.

“Nor to you,” I say to her. “Stop asking questions and finish your breakfast.”

“Do they know who did it?” my wife asks.

“No,” I say. “But I think I might.”

“You do? How do you know?”

“Did
what
?”

“Didn't I tell you to eat your breakfast?”

“I ate it already,” my eldest says.

“Go upstairs and brush your hair,” says my wife.

“It's combed,” she says. “See?”

“It doesn't look combed,” my wife says. “Comb it again. Go on.”

“Mom!”

I put down my fork. “Listen to your mother,” I say. “Upstairs.”

My daughter makes a show of leaving, smashing her chair back into the wall, looking at us to see what we will say, climbing the stairs slowly, backwards, looking at us the whole time.

“You boys too,” my wife says. “Go upstairs and get ready for school.”

“I'm still eating, Mom,” says Jack.

“Go,” she says. “And wash your face.”

Mark goes and Jack follows, groaning. My wife pulls Jack's plate onto the tray of our youngest's high chair. Our youngest takes up the plate, clatters it onto the floor. My wife gropes absently under the table for it, her eyes still on me, the baby grabbing at the clip in her hair.

“Who killed her?” my wife says.

“I shouldn't say anything,” I say. “Clergy's confidentiality.”

“Tell me anyway.”

“I don't know for certain,” I say. “If I tell you, I don't want to hear it from the neighbors when I get home tonight.”

“Don't worry,” she says. “I'll keep it to myself.”

“I think it was her brother,” I say.

“Her brother?”

“He got her pregnant. She told me herself.”

“Her own brother?”

“Yes.”

“Was it a half-brother?”

“How should I know? Would that make a difference? I think he was her full brother.”

“Lord, that is awful,” she says. “But if he is capable of incest, he's capable of murder.”

“We don't know for certain he did it,” I say. “We shouldn't judge the boy.”

“No,” she says. “I guess not.”

She opens the paper again, reading down the column, the picture of the girl in the clearing riding beside her thumb, staring at me. The girl is faceup in the photograph, though my recollection is facedown. I left her facedown, her body anyway. They've moved her head back around, away from where I left it, made it look still attached, ruining the tableau.

A pretty piece of work, if I do say so myself. But she's saved. I've done her a favor.

“What are you going to do?” my wife asks.

“Go to the office. I should have left already.”

“About this, I mean,” she says, tapping the girl's face. “About the brother.”

“I can't prove any of it.”

“You should mention the brother to the police,” she says.

“Don't tell me what to do,” I say. “I imagine they'll figure it out on their own.”

“Go to them today,” she says.

“I shouldn't have brought it up,” I say. “Forget I said anything.”

CHAPTER 3

Bus

I am proofreading a contract when a man chooses to sit next to me, although the bus is empty. He wears a white button-down shirt, a burgundy tie, a dark suit. He nods to me as he pulls his briefcase onto his lap, springing the catches, opening it up. He takes out the morning paper, unfolds the body of the dead girl.

“Morning,” he says.

“Pardon?” I say.

“Morning,” he says. “As in good morning.”

“Yes,” I say. “Good morning.”

“Or as in bad morning,” he says.

I shrug.

“Or as in mourning the dead,” he says, tapping the girl's face.

“Yes,” I say. “Terrible tragedy.”

“No need to hold pretense with me,” the man says. “Don't you recognize me?”

“I'm afraid I can't place you.”

“Can it be you've forgotten me?” he asks. “Even after last night?”

“I was alone last night,” I say. “I've never seen you before in my life.”

“Don't remember me?”

“Can't you sit somewhere else?”

He looks perplexed. “Why this rough treatment?” he asks. “You were happy enough to take my advice last night, no?”

He sits back, stiff, examining the newspaper in his hands.

“‘An act of extreme cruelty . . . ,'” he reads. “‘Her neck broken.'” He turns to me. “Of course, they don't put all the details in there. They're saving some, things only the killer would know.” He shakes the paper straight. “‘It is unclear whether the rape occurred before or after her death. . . .'”

He raises his head. “Any comments?”

Lowering his head, he scans the rest of the article.

“Listen to this,” he says. “‘Police are confident that blood and semen samples will lead to the apprehension of the killer.'” He puts the paper down. “Think that over, Provost.”

I turn toward the window and look out. The bus is passing out of the suburbs, past the park.

“I am not condemning you,” the man says. “I am one of your greatest admirers. We've been through this,” he says. “Let's move on to something new.”

The bus turns, the back tire scraping the curb as it rounds the corner. I see an old man on his front porch, rocking, eyes missing. He waves slowly as the bus passes him. The man beside me waves absently back.

“You were right to tell your wife about the girl's brother,” he says.

“But he didn't kill her.”

“He's still guilty,” he says. “Every day he was killing her. She wouldn't have had to be sanctified except for what he did to her. The way I see it you are blameless.”

I get up and move back a few seats, the bus driver watching me in his rearview mirror. The man follows me back, pens me in.

“Tell the police about the brother, Provost,” the man says. “Let them come to their own conclusions.”

The buildings grow tall, become netted in wire and glass. The bus moves slower, but stays empty.

“I can't do it,” I say.

“Can't?” he says. “Won't, you mean.”

“He didn't kill her,” I say.

“A technicality.”

“Hardly.”

“If he had been there maybe he'd have killed her. But for all the wrong reasons. It was fortunate you were there to kill her for the right ones.”

Staring out the window, I think it over. I like the way it sounds.

On the sidewalk, a man looks at his watch, pushes his hair out of his face. On the sidewalk behind him a man in overalls seems to be shouting at someone though there is nobody paying him any heed.

“Look,” the man beside me says. “Better him than you, no?”

The bus stops and two more people get on, two men in suits, wearing dark glasses. They pass the driver without him seeming to see them and start slowly back toward us.

“Got to go,” the man next to me says. “Almost forgot. This is my stop.”

He dashes from the seat and out the side door of the bus, the two men who have just climbed on rush down after him and out as well. I do not see him, but as the bus pulls out I see one of the other two speaking into a cellular phone, looking around as if confused. He catches a glimpse of me in the bus window and points. The bus pulls away.

In the late afternoon, the police call me at work, ask me if, as the girl's religious leader, I might have any information about the girl's murder.

“No,” I say. “I don't believe I do.”

“We were told that you might have some clue as to who the killer is.”

“Who told you this?”

The officer on the other end of the line pauses. “I'd rather not reveal my source,” he says. “Does it matter?”

“It might,” I say. I am about to say more when the line clicks. “Just a moment, officer. Will you hold?” I say, and switch lines.

“Honey?” my wife says. “The police just called.”

“I told you not to say anything.”

“I'm sorry, it just came out.”

“Why would they call at all?”

“Somebody thought they saw you near Barton's field that night,” she says. “The police called about that. To see if you'd seen anything. One thing led to another.”

“Me? I was never near there,” I almost shout. “I swear.”

“What's wrong?” she says. “I know that, you don't have to tell me, darling.”

“I have to go,” I say.

“I didn't mean to tell them,” she says. “It just slipped out.”

“Don't worry,” I say. “I'll tell them what they should know.”