The Psalmist (4 page)

 

Chapter 4

A
LL MORNING
THE
dream that had awakened Luke overnight kept replaying in his head, its details so vivid that he seemed to be remembering an actual event.

He enters the church sanctuary through the choir door, exactly as he had done on Tuesday morning. He watches the play of stained-­glass light across the pews and eventually notices a woman, seated in the next-­to-­last row, just as on Tuesday. As he approaches, she lifts her head and seems to recognize him. Her expression changes several times before he reaches her—­surprise, pleasure, sadness, and finally several degrees of pain.

The woman tries to stand but can't, her eyes indicating that her legs are broken. Luke nods, but urges her to try again anyway. On her second attempt she manages to hoist herself up unsteadily and begins to walk toward him, her legs jerking and buckling. For just a moment she stops and her eyes seem very happy; her arms begin to flap and Luke wonders if she's trying to dance. Then she loses her balance and he rushes forward to steady her. They hold each other, her face braced in his hands. Her skin is damp, as if she's just come in from a drizzle. When he pulls his hands away, he sees that pieces of her are sticking to him.

That was when he woke and saw Charlotte sleeping beside him. He looked past her at the clock on the bed-­stand:
3:17.
He closed his eyes and listened for a while to the deep breathing of Charlotte and Sneakers, in alternating rhythms, as if they were nocturnal jazz musicians riffing off of one another other as they slept.

S
OME RUMORS TAKE
their time; in Tidewater most travel quickly, especially during the off-­season. Only the sparest details about the “church killing”—­as ­people were calling it—­made the
Tidewater Times
or the local TV news. But several versions of what had happened were circulating through the gathering spots on Main Street. As ­people came and went, they exchanged the currencies of what they had “heard”: that the victim, an Asian woman, was most likely a high-­priced escort, possibly from Baltimore, who'd advertised her ser­vices on Craigslist; that the sheriff and homicide detectives had “been out to talk with Robby” two or three times already; and that the pastor “knows something.” This last rumor, based on nothing, had caused ­people to look at Luke a little funny ever since Tuesday morning.

Tidewater County was a sprawling, largely undeveloped place with three thriving industries—­fishing, farming, and tourism—­and two incorporated towns—­Tidewater and the simply named, more traditional old town of Bay. In summer, tourists packed the quaint streets of Tidewater, once a fishing village, now an enclave of Victorian-­style homes, souvenir and curiosity shops, dockside crab and oyster restaurants, and seafood packing plants.

Luke's parents first brought him to Tidewater as an impressionable eight-­year-­old, and he had been instantly charmed: the breezy bay views and seafood smells, the wood-­planked waterfront, the working harbor, and, especially, the generosity and fetching backwoods accents of the locals—­which he'd later determined were a blend of Old South and English brogue. He and his parents had taken a skipjack ride into the windy Chesapeake that morning, then wandered Main Street much of the afternoon, exploring the shops and sampling the seafood. Finally they'd discovered the commercial docks, where crabs and oysters were picked and packed, and watched as a crew unloaded fifteen bushels of oysters onto giant stainless-­steel pans.

Luke's parents were travelers who'd nurtured in him a capacity for wonder and a healthy sense of curiosity. When he was a boy, they'd taken him to remarkable places—­Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Niagara Falls, Mt. Rushmore—­as if wanting to impress upon him how large and enchanting the country really was. As an adolescent, though, he often turned his curiosity inward, and pondered his own heritage.

He'd always been told that his father's family was Irish and French, his mother's Eastern European. But he didn't look much like either parent, or, for that matter, their relatives or ancestors. His mother and father were both short, with strong features and darkish skin. When Luke was fifteen, lean and still growing, he stood two inches taller than his father, three and half inches taller than his mother. Eventually he'd tower over his mother by nearly a foot. Both parents were brown-­eyed, although there had been blue eyes on his mother's side, they told him. “That's where
your
blue eyes come from,” she used to say. But since the photographs she showed him were always black and white, it was hard to tell. Luke's father had begun to lose his hair in his early twenties, whereas Luke had thick hair—­“unruly,” a barber once called it—­and it was an odd color, a dark and light-­blond mixture; “surfer hair,” according to Charlotte.

By the time he entered high school, Luke was all but certain that his parents' stories about where he came from had been no more genuine than their tales about Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. Coincidentally, it seemed, when he was sixteen his parents called him to the family room on a Saturday morning and confessed the truth, with lowered eyes and a tone of gravity. His father began with an oddly constructed sentence that Luke still remembered with great affection: “As you may have guessed by now, Luke, we have something to tell you.” The fact that he'd been adopted didn't cause him to love his parents any less; it was the opposite—­ recognizing how much they had
wanted
to be his real parents and, in their way, how much they
had
been, he loved them more. The fact that his parents had brought him, as a wide-­eyed eight-­year-­old, to these briny, seafood-­scented streets of Tidewater County made it feel like home to him years later when he returned with Charlotte.

At the Gas 'N Bait in town—­which sold everything from apples to ammunition to hangover remedies—­Billy Banfield, a genial, obese man, came lumbering out as soon as Luke pulled in.

“Hey there, Pastor, what d'you say?” He pretended to be checking a pump on the next island. “Terrible thing down to the church. They know anything yet?”

“Not that they've shared with me, no.”

He stepped closer, moving side to side.

“Is it true what I heard—­the gal was naked when you found her?”

“No.” Luke watched the numbers whirl. “Not true.”

“No?”

“Nope, sorry.”

Billy moved a step and a half closer, trying not to seem eager, but his eyes belied his interest, as if he were entitled. “Hearing a lot of rumors, anyway.”

“Oh, I'm sure.” Luke smiled. He pulled the nozzle out and inserted it in the pump, walking tenderly from having banged his knee earlier. “Probably best not to pay a lot of attention to that sort of thing, Bill.”

“No. Wouldn't mention it, 'cept when you hear one that you know ain't true—­
can't
be true—­when it's about someone you know
couldn't
be involved . . .”

Luke realized from the way Billy's eyes had narrowed that he was talking about him. He smiled again and decided to let it go. “Anyway, take care, Bill.”

On the little “strip mall” along east Main Street, he stopped at Palmer's Florist, where a reedy, silver-­haired man he didn't recognize was selling a bouquet of tulips to a young blond woman.

“Pastor Luke?” the man said, once he completed the transaction. “That you?”

Luke lifted his eyebrows.

“George,” he said.

“Oh.” Luke realized, shaking hands, that this must be the owner, George Palmer. Like a lot of ­people in Tidewater County, George was only there occasionally during off-­season.

“Sorry, didn't recognize you,” Luke said. “I'm used to always seeing attractive young women working here.”

George Palmer smiled and looked down, as if embarrassed. “Had to return for some family business. Hoping I'd find warmer weather. What happened, anyway?”

“Wish I could say.”

“We're hearing all kinds of stories.”

­“People do like to tell stories, don't they?”

“Yes, they do.”

Luke bought two roses and continued his drive east. One of the roses he would leave at Tidewater Hospice with Millicent Blanchard, a church member who was living out her last days there. The other he'd take home to Charlotte.

Visiting the hospice always grounded Luke and seemed to comfort the patients. Today it also took his mind off of what had happened at the church—­and what the ­people of Tidewater County imagined he knew about it. He stopped to visit with each of the patients briefly before going to Millicent's corner room. At least
she
wouldn't ask him what had happened.

“How are
you
today, Millie?” he said. He lifted the blinds to let sunlight in. “You
look
good. Here, I brought you a rose.”

He held the flower out and Millie took it, although her watery gray eyes didn't seem at first to register what it was or who he was. Then she finally looked up at Luke and smiled broadly, like a child.

“So, you're feeling comfortable? Good. Yes, I know, gorgeous day, isn't it? Just look at those clouds. Aren't they beautiful? You know what they say: there's a lot more going on in the sky than there ever is on television. I'm glad you agree. We've always seen eye-­to-­eye on things like that, haven't we?”

Luke had to provide both sides of the conversation now with Millie, an oysterman's widow in her late sixties who had collapsed in her backyard five months ago, a few nights after sitting with Luke at an all-­you-­can-­eat church crab feast, bragging on her great-­grandkids. At first doctors thought she'd suffered a stroke, but it turned out to be a rare, degenerative brain disease. Millie wasn't expected to last more than a ­couple weeks longer—­although if anyone could defy expectations, it was her.

Luke felt a clutch of emotions, as he always did, holding her fragile hand, praying for Millie and her family, thanking God for Millie's life, for her work with the church and in the community. As he walked away from her room, into the corridor, he felt weighted down with sadness, knowing that these visits with her were numbered.

He took the northern route back, through farmland that seemed to stretch without end in all directions. The morning haze had burned away and noontime light cast a stark clarity on the farm fields, the grain silos and wooden barns. Some places were zoned to become bigger, to attract industry and promote growth, but most of Tidewater County—­other than a few stretches on the waterfront—­was zoned to never become anything other than what it was. It's what he loved about the place.

He pushed in one of Charlotte's CDs. Chopin,
Fantasie Impromptu
, the console read. Charlotte, at his request, had begun teaching him a little about classical music, with mixed results. So far he'd learned that he liked Mahler and Tchaikovsky, although he sometimes couldn't tell the difference. This one he liked; the music quickly drew him in, lending a subtle grandeur to the countryside as he drove back toward the coast on a shoulderless two-­lane road, trying out anecdotes in his head for Sunday's sermon.

Distances became a little tricky in this open country—­so that you might see a truck across the fields and not know how far away it was or which direction it was going. He was absently tracking a pickup now as Chopin's piano melody took a mysterious turn—­a big silver truck, moving parallel to him, maybe half a mile away, but traveling faster than he was. Route 11, probably. Going west by southwest.

It must've turned left then, because when he noticed it again, the truck was coming directly toward him, perpendicularly. And then it was right there: Luke was stopped at the two-­way at Goose Creek Crossing and the truck whooshed by, shaking his car. A new-­looking double cab Ram pickup with a prominent dent on the right front fender.

More surprising than the vehicle—­it was rare to see anything but old pickups out here—­was the man driving it. As the truck passed, the driver turned his eyes to look squarely at him.

Jackson Pynne.

He recognized him. Except why would Jackson Pynne be driving through Tidewater County?

It had been months since Luke had even thought of Jackson Pynne—­and much longer since he'd actually seen him. But seeing him now gave him a bad feeling. Jackson was a hotel and condominium developer who'd come here six or seven years ago with deep pockets and plans to build a high-­end hotel-­marina project.
The Baltimore Sun
had called him a “maverick, larger-­than-­life businessman” back then—­which Jackson liked, although that article may have also begun his unraveling. Tidewater County rarely made room for ­people who were “larger than life,” particularly when they were what locals called “come heres” rather than “from heres.”

In some ways, though, Jackson
was
larger than life. Tall, long-­legged, with a self-­assured step and cool, craggy features, he always reminded Luke of a 1950s film actor, in the Robert Mitchum, William Holden mold. There was an inherent drama in his face that often made him seem to be saying more than he actually was. ­People would sometimes do a double take when they spotted Jackson walking the streets of Tidewater, thinking he might be someone famous. And, for a while, Jackson Pynne
had
been a player in the business of Tidewater County, albeit a controversial one, convincing some of the newer commissioners and zoning board members that his hotel-­marina would transform the waterfront, attracting a “new caliber” of tourist to Tidewater.

But the old guard had been quietly wary of him from the start and never made life easy for him. There were invisible layers of tradition in this county, Luke had discovered, as mysterious at times as the ways of a religious sect. Each of the three bayfront projects that Pynne tried to build had failed, costing him huge losses of money and prestige. Each time Pynne went before the county zoning boards—­boards that routinely approved Nayak projects—­he was asked to scale back his plans or to make numerous changes. In the last case—­a boutique luxury condo/hotel with a restaurant he wanted to call “Jackson's”—­the delays ultimately led the state to file fraud charges against him after Pynne accepted deposits for units that were never built. He eventually repaid the deposits, but by then he'd worn out his welcome.