You Believers (38 page)

Livy heard the front door open, watched Shelby go to Roy. “What you got?”

He stood, hands on his hips, nodding. It wasn’t a smile, but there was some kind of satisfaction on his face. “They brought in the kid that gave us the lead. He’s not saying much of anything. He’s a kid, a nervous kid. He says he knows the guy who attacked the girl in Land Fall. All he wants is the reward. He’s mad about the reward not coming yet. But we’re holding up on that as long as we can.” He looked to Livy. “His granny said something about Jesse Hollowfield being at her house. Him yelling about a truck out of gas. This boy knows what happened. He goes back with Hollowfield to juvy. They’ve got history. A good chance he was with Hollowfield when—” His eyes went to the floor. “When he took the woman with the truck.”

“Katy,” Livy said. “You can say it. We all know it was Katy.”

“He should die,” the girl said. “I know what I’m telling you. He’ll go on killing as many as he can.”

“He’s locked up,” Roy said. “Not in juvy this time. He’s a man now. He’s doing time.”

“Until he gets out,” the girl’s father said. He turned to the window. Livy could see him working his jaw, clenching, unclenching, chewing back words. “You know he’s lawyered up.”

Roy turned. “We’re putting pressure on the kid that tipped us off. We know he knows more than he’s saying. And like I said, they go way back. He knows damn well who Jesse Hollowfield is.”

The girl went back to the glass wall. “He said he was the devil.” She shook her head, staring out at the ocean.

“He likes to say all kinds of things,” Roy said. “No remorse.” He looked to Shelby. “I’ve never seen anything like it. He doesn’t even act worried. No regrets even when he’s sitting in jail.”

The girl turned to them. “The only thing he regrets is not raping that girl,” she said. She looked to Livy. “I’m sorry. But he was really angry about that.”

Sweat ran down Livy’s back. She watched them all. The talk was going nowhere. She looked at the little triangle sandwiches arranged on a platter and the little matching plates, napkins. She couldn’t remember when the girl’s mother had brought them into the room. They sat there more like stage props than something anyone would eat. She tasted a metal flavor in the back of her mouth. She worked to swallow it down. She knew if she drank something, it would help, but she couldn’t try to hold a glass again. She blinked, tried to see what was going on in the room. The girl was saying something to Roy. Shelby was checking her phone.

The mother was picking up glasses, putting them back on the tray. It would be time to go any minute. And all she had was more evidence that Katy was dead. But not enough evidence. The words
a body
,
a body
rang in her head, clanging over anything being said. She wanted to say,
Help me
, to the people in the room, but they wouldn’t reach where she was. They were far, far away, their voices making a humming sound. She could hear the words, but the meaning hovered somewhere beyond her. The girl sat back in the chair, sinking into it. “Livy,” someone said. “Livy.” There was a word there. She thought it
had something to do with her. There was a squeeze on her shoulder. She flinched, saw Shelby.

“Livy,” Shelby said, “I think you should sit.”

“I don’t want to sit.”

“Livy,” Roy said, “we’re making some progress here.”

“We think he killed her,” Livy said. She closed her eyes, forced that crying down. “My Katy.”

He looked back at Shelby as if she could help. “We’ve got him. He’s in jail. Locked up in a concrete cave. You can try to take some kind of comfort in that.”

“I won’t take comfort until I have my daughter back.” The anger rose in her again. It felt better to be angry. She could be strong if she ran on the rage. “I won’t take comfort. This girl lived. My daughter, I know she’s gone, and I won’t take comfort until the man who did it is dead.”

The girl spoke calmly: “You’ll find your daughter. I know she’s out there, and you’ll find her.”

Livy looked at the girl, the girl’s mother, her father, standing beside her as if to protect her from a fierce wind. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t mean to yell. I’m sorry. I know it was hard to let me come to your home. It’s just that I want my girl.” She looked to the parents. “Not every daughter gets to come home. And I pray it wasn’t Katy he killed. But he killed someone. And I don’t want that for anyone. Nothing so awful should ever happen in this world.”

Shelby took her hand. “We need to go and let these people rest.”

Livy looked at them, a sweet family, clinging. It seemed nothing could tear them apart. She hoped somehow this awful thing that had happened to their daughter would bring them together again. But it wouldn’t. She knew damage just caused damage. “I’m so glad you have each other,” she said. “And I thank you.” She moved to shake
the mother’s hand, the father’s, the good hand of the girl. She lingered at the girl. “There’s another line I used to say to Katy. It’s from Helen Keller. You know Helen Keller?”

The girl shook her head.

“Well, you should know Helen Keller. She was deaf and blind. And she grew up to be a miracle. You should read her work. And there’s one line you should hang on to. This blind woman, she once said, ‘Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see the shadows.’”

The girl nodded, tears again running down her face.

“I don’t mean to make you cry. I want you to try to turn from all this and live a happy life.” She noticed the polite stillness in the room. It seemed the whole world was waiting for her next move. She looked out, saw more fishing boats heading for the shore.

“But you need to see the shadows,” the girl said.

Livy turned to her. “What?”

“That blind woman, she must have lived in a safer world. If you don’t see the shadows . . .” She paused, her blank gaze back on the ocean. “I’m just saying you need to see the sun
and
the shadows.”

Livy stood there, letting the words sink in. The girl was right. You’d be a fool if you just kept your face to the sunlight. “You’re a smart girl,” Livy said. “What would a blind woman know about seeing in this world?”

“Time to go,” Shelby said.

“Thank you,” Livy said, looking at the family standing there. She wondered how long they had been waiting for her to go. Livy took Shelby’s arm the way she might take the arm of a daughter, and they let Roy lead the way. She let herself sink a little into the strength of Shelby Waters. Her posture wasn’t perfect, had a weakness to it, but it felt right to lean a little, to trust. Maybe if she gave a little, something good would come.

Faith Is in the Doing Things

Billy had never been inside. But Katy loved the church, the old brick, the gothic arches rising, and that steeple taller than anything in their part of town. Queen of the Angels Church. He figured Katy liked it for the name as much as for those arches and the stained glass. She said when she went inside, she could remember going to church, and with all that beauty, you just had to believe in things like angels and a God who really listened to your prayers. They walked by the church when they walked to the riverfront; it was just a couple blocks out of the way, and Billy didn’t mind the extra steps, especially when Katy was in the mood to pause, stare up at the rising arches and the stained glass as if it were a miracle that such a holy thing could be right there in what some called the rough part of town. Billy had never been a fan of the Catholic Church, with all its land grabbing and paying no taxes—and once he’d heard about the church looking away while priests abused boys, well, he couldn’t bring himself to go inside the place. “It’s your place,” he told Katy, “like your Lake Waccamaw.” He couldn’t get the thrill of sitting in a truck and looking at a lake, and he was sure he’d never feel that holy feeling people got sometimes just by walking into a church. Just like she’d never
get the rush of March madness basketball, he’d never get the peace thing she was always looking for and seeming to find just sitting by a lake or in some old church.

He stood outside it, the soft morning light on the back of his head. It was a breezy kind of morning. He could have knocked out a lot of work today. But his boss had made him take the day off. After the latest news about Katy, Billy was hardly worth anything at work. He’d go in thinking the work would steady him, but then he’d find himself just standing, staring at a brick in his hand as if it could tell him what to do next. The boss had caught him staring at a brick, tapped his shoulder, said, “Take the day tomorrow, Billy; take it for yourself. Go chill, get drunk, do anything, but you take a day, mister. Don’t go joining any search parties, don’t go pick up another job, don’t go racing that truck over any high bridges. I’d say don’t you drive at all.” The boss had said, “You’re losing it, Billy.” So Billy was taking the day. And he was taking the advice to walk. Now he was thinking it would make Katy happy if he went inside.

He went up the steps to the big wooden doors. They seemed more like the doors to the castle of the Wizard of Oz. Those were her words, the way she described such doors that suggested that nobody, no way, no how, would get in to see the wizard.

The door opened smoothly, and when he stepped into the cooler air, something in him did settle. The stained glass was soothing, just as she said. But when he walked inside the church, it was nothing like he’d expected it to be. It had been gutted of anything old. The pews were new, smooth pine with burgundy cushions, and they weren’t all facing front the way they were supposed to. Some ran from the back of the room up toward the altar, and some were laid out in rows to the right and left. Maybe it was supposed to be something like a cross, the way the pews were arranged. Or maybe it was a way to give more people a better view of whatever the priest did.
And the altar, it wasn’t raised up at the back of the room the way every altar he had seen in a movie was. No, this altar, or what he guessed was the altar, was much more like a buffet table–looking thing. And the cross, nothing like the crosses he’d seen in other churches, nothing at all like what they showed in Catholic churches in movies where Jesus was nailed up there, his body lean but not too lean, enough muscle to look like a handsome man. And they always showed him with his head turned aside as if he were just taking a nap to recover from all that pain they’d put him through.

Billy sat in a pew toward the back. He closed his eyes, tried to feel something like God in the room. Katy said she went there to sort her mind out, said she even sometimes went there to pray. “For what?” Billy asked her. He’d teased her once: “Did you go in there and pray for a man like me?” She’d laughed and said she’d been praying for him her whole life. There was no way he believed that. But he loved her the way any woman would want. She was all he’d ever really wanted in a woman. He felt the crying ache in his chest. He stood. How could anyone find peace just sitting in a church? It seemed to Billy that the only way to find peace was to keep moving, walking, driving his truck fast and wild on the back roads, or laying brick, getting the mortar just right and making something solid and symmetrical rise up from uneven, scrubby ground.

He saw the rows of candles in a little cubicle to the left. At least that was familiar. He’d seen that plenty of times, people lining up to light a candle, say a prayer as if a prayer needed the heat of a flame to rise. Katy would like this. He could almost feel her behind him, saying,
Go on, go on, if nothing else, just make the little gesture
.

He pulled a dollar from the crumpled bills in his pocket, folded it, and tucked it into the metal moneybox. He put a candle in the red votive, used a taper to take the flame from another candle and light the one for Katy. He watched the wick catch the flame, thought
of the way Katy would hold him after she hadn’t seen him all day. She would wrap her arms around him, seem to breathe him in, as if she’d been holding her breath without him and now when she held him, she didn’t have to struggle, she could relax and breathe. He prayed, or thought—he wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he was sending the words out:
God, please bring Katy home. I’ll do anything you want. Just let her be all right. I’ll promise to do anything you might want. I’ll build churches in Guatemala, homes in Mexico
. He closed his eyes, listened for anything like an answer, but nothing came.

He heard a door open. He looked back toward the entrance of the church and saw a man coming out of a little side room, a bucket and a rag in hand. Billy saw the man look at him, then quickly look away. Billy felt like he’d been caught doing something wrong. He wanted to tell the man,
I put my dollar in the box
. The man just went into a space behind a little swinging door. Billy studied the door and the two doors next to it, almost like little phone booths lined up against the wall. He realized they were confession booths. Finally something the way he thought a Catholic church was supposed to be. But in the movies the booths were dark and usually carved. He wondered if these booths had that little metal grate that separated the sinner from the priest. He watched the doors, flat, smooth golden pine. No one going in or coming out. He wondered if people still went to confession these days. Did people still believe it took a priest to cancel out sins with a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys? He didn’t see anything holy about those doors. They could have been doors to closets or dressing rooms. He went to sit in a pew near them, wondered if he’d hear the cleaning man saying anything in there. But there was only silence, and in the distance he heard the wailing of a police car heading somewhere.

He thought maybe if he made a confession, God would answer his prayer. He wondered what sins he might confess but couldn’t
think of anything. He wasn’t a thief, and he’d never killed anybody. He was thinking of how he could be better at honoring his mother when he saw the man come out of one booth and, without a glance at Billy, head inside the next one. Billy caught the scent of Murphy’s Oil Soap. He remembered how, in the good days before his mom turned bitter and mean, she’d clean all the cabinets and doors with Murphy’s Oil Soap. He studied the gleaming doors of the booths, thought about the man inside wiping at fingerprints, sweat, and most likely somebody’s tears. He didn’t want to think about the tears of strangers. There was too much crying in the world. He looked up at the cross, white and smooth and spare, hanging by thin, invisible wires over the altar. It looked more like some kind of streamlined jet than the cross he’d known as a kid. He thought of his mother, lonely and too mad at the world to do anything about it. No, she’d rather hole up, smoke Dorals, watch TV, and wait, he figured, just wait for her life to lift up and change. He looked at the cross that didn’t really look like a cross and told God he would try to do better to honor his mother. It was too late for his dad. He’d never known his dad, but he told God that whatever his dad was doing, whether his dad was dead or alive or some rich criminal or some fuckup sitting in jail, he would try to honor him too.