There was a seven-foot-high mesh steel fence with three strands of barbed wire surrounding the lot. Inside the fence there was a patch of crushed white stone and shell about the size of my office. About twenty yards beyond the enclosure was a three-story steel radio tower.
On the patch of grass on my side of the fence was the door with a freshly painted white cross about the size of an ATM machine. Next to the cross was a gate with a button and a speaker just above it. I pushed the button. The clear but speaker resonant voice of a woman said, “Who is it?”
“Lew Fonesca. I’m here to see Jack Pepper.”
“Reverend Pepper,” she reprimanded.
“Reverend Pepper,” I said.
“Why?”
“Philip Horvecki,” I said.
Long pause. Long, long pause.
“Why?”
This time it was a man’s voice, the same voice I had just been listening to on the radio.
“Detective Viviase of the Sarasota Police suggested I talk to you,” I lied.
Another long pause.
“I do not wish to testify,” he said.
“Ronnie Gerall may not have done it,” I said.
I could hear the man and woman talking, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. One of them must have put a hand over the microphone. I could tell that the woman sounded insistent and Pepper sounded resigned.
“Come in,” said Pepper. “Close the gate behind you.”
Something clicked and I pushed the gate open.
The door at the end of the path was painted a bright red. It looked as if a new coat of paint had been applied minutes earlier. The station’s call letters were painted in black in the middle of the door with a foot-high brown cross under them.
“Come in,” came the man’s voice.
I opened the door.
“Take off the hat please,” the man said. “This station is part of the House of the Lord.”
I took off my Cubs cap, stuffed it in my back pocket, stepped in, and closed the door behind me.
The room was about the size of a handball court. There were three desks with chairs lined up side by side on the left, and on the right stood a narrow table with spindly black metal legs. The table was covered in plastic that was meant to look like wood, but it looked like plastic. On the table there sat a computer and printer and boxes of eight-by-ten flyers I couldn’t read from where I stood. There were eight folding chairs leaning against the wall. Beyond all this, through a large rectangular window, I could see a studio barely big enough for two people. In fact, two people were in there. One had a guitar. One was a man. One was a woman. They were obviously singing. They were smiling. I couldn’t hear them.
I looked over at an ample woman of no more than fifty whose dark hair was a study for one of those “before” pictures on early morning television.
“Speak,” she said.
I looked at the man behind the second desk. He was gaunt and had red hair and an almost baby-like face. He could have been any age.
“You’re Reverend Pepper?”
“I am,” he said. “And you are?”
“An investigator hired to see if Ronnie Gerall killed Philip Horvecki. Want to go someplace more private?”
“Whatever you have to say to me can be said in front of Lilly.”
“Philip Horvecki,” I said. “He was not a good man.”
Lilly closed her eyes and nodded her head.
“He wasn’t punished for what he did to you,” I said.
“It was my word against his. The police said that wasn’t enough,” Pepper replied.
“He wasn’t punished,” I said.
“Yes he was, but not by the law. His punishment was delayed, but the Lord was not in a hurry.”
Lilly was slowly nodding her head to the rhythm of Pepper’s voice and the eyes of Jack Pepper vibrated back and forth.
“Where were you Saturday night?”
“What time?”
“Evening, at about ten.”
“In my home, my aunt’s home where I live. She looks after me. Lilly was there too.”
“I was,” Lilly said.
“Lilly came to dinner and to talk about a tour I have been planning. I’m sorry. I have to get back in the studio. Gilbert and Jenny are almost finished with their song.”
“And today, about eleven in the morning?” I asked.
“Another crime?”
I said nothing.
“I was here, doing the morning call-in show,” he said.
Before I could question Lilly, the theory I had been putting together about recorded shows and lying alibis seemed to come apart. Maybe I had just seen Laura too many times.
Jack Pepper rose with the help of two aluminum forearm crutches. He leaned forward as he slowly came out from behind the desk.
He looked up at me with what may have been a touch of pain and said, “MS. Multiple Sclerosis. The Lord has chosen to touch me with this affliction. Would you like the name and number of my doctor to see if I’m telling the truth?”
“No,” I said.
“Fonesca? Italian. You are a Catholic?” he asked.
Lilly was shaking her head yes. She was either answering for me or at the brilliance of Jack Pepper’s observation.
“No,” I said.
“Lapsed?”
“No. I’m a lapsed Episcopalian.”
“We are all one in Christ,” he said.
“Except for the Jews and a long list of others.”
“They are welcome to join the faith and be embraced as brothers and sisters and be saved,” he said.
“Amen,” said Lilly softly.
“You believe that in spite of what God has let happen to you?”
“Because of what God has let happen to me.”
“Philip Horvecki sodomized you,” I said gently.
“No,” he said with a smile. “He tried and failed. The Lord did not choose to let it happen.”
I shut up and watched him make his painful way toward the door to the studio in which I could see that the two singers had wrapped up. Then he stopped and looked back at me.
“The Lord has allowed something bad to happen to you, too,” he said. “You are filled with grief and sorrow.”
That could have been said of just about everyone I knew or had ever known. But, it hit me. He opened the door to the studio a few seconds after the red light over the door had gone off.
“You have a favorite first line of a book?” I asked.
“Genesis one,” he said.
“Something else.”
He paused and said, “ ‘Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically.’ ”
“What’s that from?” I asked taking out my index cards and pen.
“ Lady Chatterley’s Lover,” he said.
He entered, and the studio door closed behind him.
Never underestimate the ability of a human being to surprise.
“There are many roads to enlightenment and belief,” Lilly said.
If there were that many roads, why wasn’t I on one of them? I looked at her. She was beaming, her eyes fixed on the studio door.
“All are welcome to this church,” she said.
“Then why the barbed-wire fence?” I asked.
“There are people on this earth who have been put here to challenge, vex, and destroy to keep us from spreading the faith.”
“Vandals,” I said.
“Minions of the devil,” she said.
I thought I might save a little time, so I simply asked, “You didn’t happen to kill Philip Horvecki and Blue Berrigan?”
“I don’t know any Blue Berrigan and I don’t believe in killing.”
“You happen to have a favorite first line from a book?”
“ ‘It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed,’ ” she said. “ Fahrenheit 451.”
With that, I went to the door.
“Feel free to come back,” Lilly said.
I had no intention of doing so. When I got back into the car and turned on the radio, I was greeted by the voice of the Reverend Jack Pepper:
“… a special prayer for the soul of Lewis Fonseca, one of our Lord’s lost children.”
“Fonesca,” I said softly. “Not Fonseca.”
I turned off the radio and drove amid the sound of silence.