Storming Heaven (23 page)

“Yes.”

“Then you accept your place in the church?”

Jennifer took a deep breath and looked away from her grandfather, trying unsuccessfully to clear her head. What else could she do?

“Yes.”

The people began walking up to her one at a time, each silently leaning over and kissing her on the cheek with eyes full of awe. All except the man who had come in with them. The man with the mustache. He kissed her as the others had, but his expression was one of quiet triumph.

In a moment they were all gone and she was alone in the room with Sara, her nameless companion, and the shell of what was once her grandfather and God’s messenger on earth. Jennifer looked around her and then back down at her grandfather’s body, feeling a small glimmer of hope in her chest. Sara didn’t want her there, she knew that. And she wanted nothing to do with her church. Jamie’s mom would take her in. It would be less than two years until she went to college and then she could build her own life. One that had nothing to do with Albert Kneiss or Sara, or her parents.

“I don’t want any of this,” Jennifer said. “Bring the others back in and I’ll tell them. You can have the church. It’s yours.”

Sara’s mouth curled into a smile devoid of warmth. “I don’t think you understand, Jennifer.”

“I do understand. My grandfather wanted me to take over for him as the head of the church.”

Sara shook her head. “He wanted much more than that for you.”

Jennifer was confused for a moment. She knew what he had said.

“Albert has served God for many years,” Sara said. “And God has taken him to his reward.” She reached out and took Jennifer’s hand. “You haven’t been chosen to lead the church, Jennifer. You’ve been chosen as God’s new Messenger.”

Jennifer tried to step back, but Sara tightened her grip on her hand. She looked down at her grandfather’s body, Sara’s words penetrating her mind. Good Friday was still a few weeks away. He wasn’t supposed to be dead yet.

“It will be time for you to take your place with God soon, Jennifer.”

“No!” Jennifer screamed, pulling away and trying to run. The man at Sara’s side caught hold of her before she could make it even a few feet. “That’s not what he said! It’s not and you know it. My grandfather wanted to give the church to me!”

“Your grandfather is dead, Jennifer,” Sara said smoothly. “You have no idea what he wanted. How could you?”

Jennifer squeezed her eyes shut and bit the inside of her cheek again, harder this time. How could she have been so stupid? She’d let Sara trick her into telling those people that she wanted to die.

She pushed at the man holding her, knowing that she had no hope of escaping his grip, and then sunk to the floor. There was no one left to help her. No one cared if she lived anymore. And Sara only cared that she died.

B
EAMON TOOK THE PLASTIC BAG OFF HIS
frozen doorknob and pushed through the door into his living room. He leaned back outside for a moment to shake the snow off his parka and briefcase, then pulled the door tightly shut.

They were rotating, he thought as he sat down on one of the stools at the edge of his kitchen counter and began to flip through the pad he’d brought with him from the car. And they liked Fords.

He grabbed a Hi-Liter and put a green stripe over his notes relating to a red Taurus that had been popping up behind him more often than it should. That was two cars. It was possible that there were more, but he hadn’t been watching long enough to be sure of the pattern. What he was sure of, though, was that he was being followed. And worse, he was about seventy-five percent sure that his new neighbor’s decision to rent in that particular location had been influenced by the view. Of his condo.

He reached into the plastic bag that had been hanging on his door and pulled a damp envelope from it. The envelope contained a single yellow Post- it note.

Beamon glanced at his watch and then looked at the briefcase bulging with administrative bullshit. It had been backing up for weeks—what harm would one more day do? He walked over and opened the fridge but found nothing more than a few cans of beer. Showing up on Carrie’s doorstep with the dregs of a twelve-pack of Busch probably presented a little too realistic an image for this early in their relationship. Probably better to go empty- handed.

But then, what did he know? His history with women was less than impressive. If you didn’t count the logistically impossible attraction between him and his old partner, Laura Vilechi, his last date had been almost two years ago. A friend had set it up, describing the woman as intelligent and attractive, but a witch. Beamon hadn’t seen any serious problem with that—he himself had been known to be an occasional pain in the ass. What he hadn’t understood was that “witch” hadn’t been an evaluation of her personality; it had been a statement of religious affiliation.

It had been torture. A black cat had wandered in front of them on the way to the restaurant, then a woman who had something that looked like an enormous wart on her nose sat down in booth next to them. He’d bravely resisted temptation, though.
and managed to make not a single comment through the appetizers and most of the main course. Then she had to go and start telling a story that somehow involved a broom. He’d ended up alone with a lap full of red wine.

Since then, there had never seemed to be time. Always some life-or-death case tempting him from the sidelines or some administrative snafu that promised to make his life miserable if he didn’t deal with it yesterday.

Until recently, his plan had been to continue with his former lifestyle and drop dead of a heart attack a few years before he reached mandatory retirement. But he finally realized that was stupid. There was more out there than the quickly waning adrenaline rush of a good case.

Beamon went into the bathroom and smoothed down a curl in what was left of his hair. At least the weight he’d lost had thinned out his face. A significant improvement, though he still wasn’t in any real danger of being described as good looking. But what the hell—he had other endearing qualities.

Beamon rapped on Carrie’s door and glanced at his watch. Only ten minutes late. She came to the door almost immediately, accompanied by her daughter and the smell of garlic.

“Will you accept me empty-handed, Carrie? I just walked in from work.”

“Absolutely. Come on in.”

Emory attached herself briefly to his leg as he stepped into the house, a credit to her mother’s exhaustive training.

“You’re dealing with that better and better, Mark,” Carrie said as she walked back to the kitchen.
“I think my conditioning experiment is working.”

Beamon picked Emory up almost to the ceiling and spun her around. “I remember my first autopsy, Carrie. It’s amazing what you can get used to.” He swung the little girl back to the floor, ignoring the smirk on Carrie’s face. “Right, Emory?”

“Right!” she agreed and threw herself onto the sofa in front of the TV. “Your show’s over.”

Beamon walked into the kitchen with a questioning look on his face.

“Emory seems to think you have your own show. Every evening at the same time she switches the TV to the local news and watches for you.” Carrie poured him a rather full glass of red wine. “She’s very impressed.”

Beamon smiled and sipped at the wine. He’d never really acquired a taste for it. “It’s nice to know I have a fan.”

“How are you doing on that case, Mark?” she said as she turned to check the oven. “I saw the thing about the white slavery ring. It’s so horrifying.”

“There
is
no godda—” Beamon cleared his throat and lowered his voice. “There is no white slavery ring.”

“No?”

“No. That came from some psychic. The press printed it like it was gospel ‘cause they consider violence without sex kind of dry.”

She slid a bubbling casserole out of the oven using a pair of garish oven mitts and then reached back in for a tray of muffins. “I think we’re about ready.”

The meal was indescribable. Despite the rich garlic smell and the satisfying bubbling of the deep
red sauce, Carrle’s eggplant parmesan tasted like, well, like his fork. Its blandness was matched only by that of the almost dressing-free salad.

“You know, Mark, someday I’m going to write a cookbook,” Carrie said, right on cue. “I swear, the cookbooks you get today are so full of things like sour cream and butter that the dishes could kill you If you just look at them.” She pointed at his plate. “I just leave all that stuff out. You can’t even tell the difference.”

“I sure can’t,” he lied through a mouthful of muffin that seemed to be soaking up sallva faster than his body could produce It. “How’s that thesis you’re working on going?”

“Really well, thanks for asking. It’s almost done, It looks like It’s going to get published next month,”

“That’s great, Congratulations. I trust you didn’t have to crash any more weddings to finish It,”

She affected a seductive pout that seemed to transform her Into an entirely different woman. “You’re not still mad about that, are you? You did get two free dinners out of it, for God’s sake.”

“No, no. Not mad,” Beamon said, laying down his fork and hoping that dessert wasn’t on the menu. “Intrigued. I actually find the Kneissians fascinating.”

That turn In the conversation was the last straw for Emory, who asked to be excused from the table and rushed off to her room before her mother could answer.

“Me too. You know, It’s really the first religion to embrace science. Most falths in one way or another are at odds with technology. I mean, God has to make statements, and those statements remain static while the world continues to move forward, Causes friction. The other thing I find Interesting is
that the Kneissians’ belief system isn’t built around a lot of set-in-stone—if you’ll excuse the pun—rules like many other Western religions. Right and wrong is a little more of a gray area. They’re more interested in being all they can be.”

Beamon nodded thoughtfully and reached over to refill her wineglass. “Does that make them dangerous?”

She thought about that for a moment. “I don’t mean to say that they don’t have a strong sense of morality—all you have to do is look at them to see that they do. All I’m saying is that their Bible allows for more flexibility. That in turn should keep it from becoming obsolete as we continue rushing toward.. whatever it is we’re rushing toward.”

She stood and stacked Beamon’s plate on top of hers.

“Let me help you with that,” Beamon said.

“Oh, I’m not cleaning up—just getting these out of the way. Back in a sec.”

She was wearing a pair of brown wool slacks and a loose-fitting white blouse that, once again, draped along the curves of her body beautifully. Beamon watched her with admiration as she glided off to the kitchen and then reappeared a moment later.

“Let me ask you a related question,” he said.

“Am I being interrogated?”

“Absolutely not—I’m just trying to distract you while I get you drunk.”

“Oh, that’s okay, then,” she said, sitting down and picking up her wineglass. “What’s your question?”

“From a psychological point of view, why isn’t religion as important now as it was, say, a thousand years ago?”

She swirled her glass and stared into the deep red liquid contained there for a few moments. “What you expect me to say is that we Just don’t need it as much. That we used it to explain things we didn’t understand and we understand more now. That we don’t suffer as much during our lives now, so we don’t need an afterlife as desperately.” She took another sip of her wine. “But I don’t know if that’s it. With the speed that our lives go by now, we don’t have as much time for real companionship. We’re losing the ability to reach out to people around us. Maybe we need God more now than we ever did.”

“God, yes. But religion?”

She shrugged. “I don’t think the answer to your question is as psychological as it is political. You’re a historian, aren’t you?”

Beamon chuckled. “I squeezed in a history degree between benders at Yale, yes. But I don’t think anybody would confuse me with a historian.”

She looked at him with what might have been affection; his senses in that arena were hopelessly dull. “Somehow I think you’re being modest. You tell me, Mark. You don’t seem to be in the habit of asking questions you don’t know the answers to. Why is religion less dominant today than it was a thousand years ago?”

Beamon took a deep breath and tapped his nail against his glass, producing a clear, unwavering tone. “Maybe it’s not the worshipers, but that religions limit themselves.”

“How so?”

“It seems to me that all organized religions have some factor that keeps them from gaining power. The most obvious is what we were talking about—
the backward thinking. Some of the older religions of the world have customs and dogma that worked well when they were first implemented, but now, hundreds or thousands of years later, they create barriers to progress—to meeting the needs of today’s worshiper. The Catholic church in the United States might be a good example of that. Their views on the marriage of priests, women, abortion, divorce—all reflect a time that’s long gone.”

He paused for a moment to examine her expression and make sure she wasn’t finding this offensive. So far so good. “Another limiting factor, particularly for newer religions, would be a very unusual belief system. The Mormons and Scientologists—right or wrong—run into trouble there. What they have to say is perhaps too new. It doesn’t tie back to a concept that people grew up with and therefore don’t question.”

“What about some of the Eastern religions? What’s their ‘limiting factor’?”

“A lot of them are more philosophies than religions. They lack a central deity to order them around and really don’t seem to have developed political agendas. Too inward-looking.”

“Okay, then. Here’s one for you. What’s the Kneissians’ ‘limiting factor’?”

Beamon picked up the wine bottle in front of him and poured some into his glass. “That’s just it. I can’t think of one.”