Hell on Church Street (22 page)

“Not really my family,” Nick shot back.

“No,” I said.

Nick watched me in the rearview mirror for a moment and he said, “I’d like to ask you something.”

I leaned back. “I need to rest,” I said.

Brother Herschel nodded, the old peacemaker. “I agree,” he said. “We should let the man rest his bones, Nick.”

Nick didn’t say anything more, but when we rolled into my driveway an hour later he walked me to the porch. I unlocked the front door, and Nick stood there watching me.

“Thanks for the lift,” I said.

He straightened up like he was reporting for duty at a flagpole. “I should tell you,” he said, “that there has been some disturbing talk around the church the last few days.”

“About what?”

“About you. Brother Herschel’s too polite to mention anything. I’m not so polite. I’m direct. Do you care if I’m direct with you right now, brother?”

I leaned against the door. “No, Nick,” I said. “Please be direct.”

“Gabriel Card brought it to my attention that his sister met with you at the school near his aunt’s house a few days ago.”

“Yes.”

He cocked his head a little. “Is there anything else about that meeting that you feel is relevant?”

I pursed my busted bottom lip and said, “No. I’m her pastor. Is there anything odd about a youth pastor meeting with a youth who has gone through a traumatic loss?”

“If the meeting takes place in private.”

“It was hardly in private. It was in a public place, a public place she called and asked me to meet her at. You yourself encouraged me to talk to her. I don’t see that Gabe has a cause for concern.”

Nick glared at me. “Gabe seems to think there was something going on between the two of you.”

I glared back at him as long as I could, then I rattled my keys a little and stared down at them.

“Preposterous,” I said.

“She came to see you at the hospital,” he said.

“So did you.”

“There are no rumors going around about me and you, though,” he said.

“Have you talked to her?” I asked.

Nick crossed his arms like a disapproving father, “Yes, I’ve asked Angela, and, no, she has nothing to say. Her friends all seem to think there’s something wrong with her, however.”

“For heaven’s sake, Nick, her parents were just murdered.”

“They seemed to think there was something going on before that.”

“I don’t know what you expect me to say.”

“For starters, I’d expect you to look me in the eye and tell me nothing was going on between you and Angela Card.”

I looked up at him and said, “There was nothing going on between me and Angela Card.”

Nick raised his thick eyebrows. “I see,” he said dryly.

“God,” I said, “you really don’t like me, do you?”

“There’s just been some disturbing talk in the last few days. I don’t know what to make of it. I really don’t. I’m still thinking about it, trying to figure it all out. And now this thing with Doolittle… And then, just tonight, I’ve seen you with Van. It’s all very…”

“What?” I said. “ ‘It’s all very’ what?”

Nick squared his shoulders. “It’s suspicious, Geoffrey. It’s all pretty damn suspicious.”

“Maybe you should pray about it.”

Nick stared at me like he’d like to punch me in the face. “I am praying about it. A lot of people are praying about it.”

“Good,” I said. “It’s good to know you wouldn’t rush to crucify a man on innuendo and lies.”

Nick said, “I’m asking you not to speak to Angela until this is resolved.”

“I see. And why is that? Doesn’t that already sound like I’ve been convicted?”

“It’s for the best. Her aunt agrees. When she took Angela to see you in the hospital she hadn’t been made aware of the situation in its fullness.”

“Did you make her aware of the situation in its fullness, Nick?”

“Yeah, Geoffrey. I did.”

“I see.”

Nick smiled. The son of a bitch smiled. I was like a butterfly with a pin through its thorax. He said, “We’ll be talking later.”

I stared at him for too long before I finally managed to say, “Okay.”

He turned to walk back to the car.

I called to him, “You never liked me, Nick.”

He turned around part ways and said, “It’s not about you and me, brother. That’s maybe part of the problem: you think it’s about you and me.” Then he kept walking.

Brother Herschel was staring at me through the windshield, his amiable old face as blank as a burlap sack. I waved. He didn’t wave back.

Chapter Twenty-five

I was standing in the center of my living room. I just stood there like an idiot. My neck hurt like all hell, but I didn’t take any medicine. I just stood there, thinking, but it was like trying to think at the epicenter of an earthquake. The Cards were dead; Doolittle Norris was dead; Ian and his mother were dead; the church was about to kick
me out; and Angela, sweet Angela,
seemed to be afraid of me. It was all falling apart, and it was all falling apart so goddamn fast I could barely keep up with it.

There wasn’t any hope of pulling the church back together, not with an investigation of Doolittle’s wreck and certainly not with rumors about
me and the preacher’s underage daughter
. Jesus. If Nick knew, then I could be goddamn sure everyone knew. He’d been looking for something to get me out of the way, and I had handed it to him, two or three times more than he needed.

And of course none of that shit mattered anyway—and by
that shit
I mean my whole damn life—because I still had to deal with Van Norris. He had let me go, but it all seemed too easy. Was I being set up to take the fall for Ian and Bertie Mae Norris?
Almost certainly.
Would it matter that I hadn’t killed either of them? I doubted it. I’d still go down for Ian’s murder. And that was only if Van decided to let the law catch me. I was still dangerous to him. I ran to the window and looked out on Church Street. It was quiet, but he could already have people on the way. Or maybe the cops were on
their
way to question me about Doolittle and the Cards. Either way, if I stayed in Arkansas, I was a dead man. Jesus, the best option I had, if absolutely everything went right, was to get defrocked and thrown into jail as a statutory rapist.

I rushed into the bedroom. I didn’t think about it. I didn’t think about anything for days. From here on out I was going on instinct.

I threw some clothes and utilities in a little suitcase my grandmother had given me and piled in a couple of my movies. Then I cleaned out my Just-in-Case fund from a box of macaroni and cheese in the back of the cupboard. The fund only amounted to a couple hundred dollars. I would have to hit the ATM on the way out of town and clear out my account. If my last car payment check hadn’t been cashed yet, I had around eight or nine hundred dollars in the bank. I’d need it all. I pulled on a coat and stuck Mrs. Norris’s gun in one pocket, and my grandmother’s fancy carving knife and its sheath into the coat’s lining. I cursed the money situation. Brother Card had convinced me to put a bunch of cash into a CD. Sound investment, he’d called it. Good stewardship of the Lord’s blessing. Asshole. Now I’d be on the run with a thousand dollars.

When I was packed and ready to go, I took one last look around the house.

I went to the back door and eased it open. I peeked around and, sensing no one, crept out. The air was sharp and cold, the same way it had been when Ian and Van led me into the woods. I was above the cold, above the pain in my chest and bones. Adrenaline pushed me forward. I kept below the sill of the living room windows and snuck around to the front of the house. There was no car. No truck. No SUV. No one was watching the house.

I got in my car and was off. I could have left town right then and who knows what might have happened? But I drove to Angela.

It’s hard to tell you how I felt about her right then. I wasn’t thinking of love, and I wasn’t thinking of lust. But I was scared. I guess I just wanted someone with me.

When I got there, I didn’t see her aunt’s car in the driveway. I pulled up and sat for a second. I was too scared to get out of the car. I was too scared to drive away.

Then the front door opened, and she walked out. Her thick coat was buttoned up to her neck, and she was wearing a sock cap. I rolled down the window.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I came to see you,” I said.

“I heard you got out of the hospital,” she said. “I wanted to see you,” She looked around as if someone might be watching.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I just told you.”

“No, why are you looking around?”

She held up her palms. “You’re acting weird. What are you doing?”

“Come on,” I said. I motioned her toward the passenger seat.

“Now where are you going?”

“We can’t talk out here. Get in the car. I’ll tell you while we drive around.”

“I don’t want to get in the car with you.”

I said, “I’m freezing, Angela. My neck hurts. And I’m in trouble. Please get in the car, so we don’t have to talk out here.”

“Why don’t we go in the house?”

“Because we can’t, baby. Please get in. I haven’t talked to you in days, and that’s all I’ve wanted to do.”

She looked around again. I watched her. I could always read her, and it was all there on her face. The pull. I was her first and only lover. I was all she really had left after her parents died, and despite everything she might think or fear, she desperately wanted to believe me and love me. I could still make this happen.

She closed her eyes for a moment, opened them and came around the car and got in.

As she got in, I didn’t look around to see if the neighbors were peeking out their windows. They probably were. I knew that. The news that I was running off with the Card girl would tear through town like a virus. The church would know, and the cops would know. Everything was ash.

“We have to leave town,” I said.

I backed out and started down the street.

“I’m not leaving town,” she said flatly. She sounded like she was forty years old. “You can stop right now if you think you’re taking me out of town.”

I rubbed my face. We slid past the edge of the neighborhood. A few minutes later we passed a church, and I shook my head.

She was looking at me, and it was impossible to drive and read her face at the same time, but it felt like she was concerned about me.

“Are you okay? Your neck?”

“It hurts.” I showed her the splints on my left hand. “Three broken fingers.”

“What happened?”