Anthony stumbled for words. “The only question is why. Why do you want me to do this? Why should I? Why does she deserve that?”
“You might as well ask God why we exist? Why is there cruelty in the world? Why do bad things happen to good people?”
Anthony tried to regain a mental grip. “You’re comparing existential questions that have plagued philosophers since time began with killing my wife. That’s a ridiculous comparison.”
“It’s not. You just have to look at it the right way.”
“You say, ‘Kill your wife,’ and I shouldn’t ask questions?”
Ellis thought for a moment. “I’m beginning to question your commitment to His will.”
“How do I know it really is what God wants? You have a direct line to Him, is that it?”
“Calm down.”
“Calm down? You tell me to kill the woman I love and I should be calm about it?” He balled his hands into fists. They ached with the low groan of a gator scoping out prey.
“Anger isn’t going to help anything.”
“God doesn’t want this. I refuse to believe that.”
“Then we’re done.”
“I can’t believe I was ever taken in by you. All your Jesus shit is just a front. You like manipulating people, deceiving them. You’re a monster.” He knocked open the passenger door, started to get out, paused. “Stay away from my son. You can’t have him.”
“We already do,” Ellis said with the faintest hint of victory.
“He’s in my house right now and if you or your partner try to keep me from my child, you will be very sorry.”
“You’ll fight off the men in the van behind us, too?”
The large guy in the driver’s seat was tapping his fingers on the wheel to an unheard beat.
“You’re threatening me?”
“It can be tough to accept what God has for us. It is easier, safer, to turn away, but when you turn from His glory, you end up in eternal darkness.”
“Stop spouting your shit.”
“Tell me now that there isn’t a part of you that wants to kill your wife. You’ve wanted to for a while. She’s practically dead anyway. Sleeps all day. Drugged to the gills. She’s no longer the woman you love. She’s a hindrance to your ascension.”
Anthony wanted to tell Ellis that he could shove his psychological Jesus games up his ass, but there was part of him that wanted to kill his wife, part of him that prayed quietly every time she took more of her pills that this time she would slip into her coma and never come out, part of him that imagined how easily he could suffocate her with a pillow. He would never admit that, of course, but it was true and its veracity would forever mark his soul. Given the right circumstance, maybe he would kill his wife. Not now, no, never. He was done with all this shit. The clouds had parted. He’d stopped digging that pit of grief deeper—it was time to climb out. It was time to take back his family. If they tried to stop him, beat him, threatened him, he’d just run to the police. Even if they abducted Brendan, the police wouldn’t take long to find him. “Stay away from me and my family.” The words rang with the certainty of a father’s commitment to do whatever was necessary to protect his family.
Ellis did not miss a beat. “I can just as easily have those men place Dr. Carroll back in your bedroom and you can discuss his death with the police. Dwayne and I, the whole Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered, none of it would be relevant. You hated Dr. Carroll for keeping your wife drugged up all the time, maybe even suspected him of having his way with her. It’s a very open and shut case.”
This threat gave Anthony only a moment’s pause. He had killed Dr. Carroll and he would have to face the consequences. He could claim temporary insanity, which was probably true anyway.
“So be it. I deserve to be punished for what I did.”
Ellis nodded, perhaps in appreciation of this statement, like a chess player admiring the bold move of his opponent. “That’s very noble of you and fine with me. You go to jail, Brendan goes with us.”
Anthony settled slowly back into the car seat. He stopped climbing: the hole was too deep. Streaks of sunlight slashed across Ellis’s face like prison bars.
“If I kill my wife?”
“You and Brendan and Tyler will be perfectly content and happy and, most importantly, helping us on our mission from God.”
The lines of sun on his face were not bars but gashes in a facade, exposing the sinister creature beneath. Anthony saw that creature now but was helpless to fight it or run from it.
15
Dwayne spoke quickly but with the determined beat of a storyteller who wished to give each part of his tale the attention it deserved. Brendan sat enraptured while Dwayne told him about Dr. Carroll and how, one day several years ago, Dwayne killed Sasha Karras’s father.
“Ellis had told me that one day I would be glad to know that someone with my DNA was walking around. That, more than anything else, stopped me from beating my wife and turned me to God. He was right. I wanted to have a child, a son, someone I could love unconditionally without all the bullshit that goes with marriages and Hallmark love.
“I walked out the door of my own house with Ellis and didn’t look back. Ellis saved me. I will be grateful for that until I die. I owe him everything. Without him, I’d be in jail right now. I don’t know how he found me, if God really led him to me or not, but I don’t really care. He brought me into the glory.
“Last fall, I contacted my wife. She wasn’t hard to find, hadn’t even moved. She’s divorced me, found some way to get it done because she claimed I ‘abandoned her.’ Really, I saved her—her life, anyway.
“I asked about our child, of course. I wasn’t going to assume any right to the kid, wasn’t even going to ask for any pictures. When God says it’s time, then it’s time. Instead, she told me the child was never born. After I walked out the door, she had a miscarriage. Couldn’t even reach the phone to call 9-1-1. My child, my son, slipped out of her and died on the kitchen floor while I was in a car with Ellis driving off to my calling.
“I beat her so viciously that I killed my son.”
Brendan thought of the woman hanging off Dwayne’s arm at the church. “You could have another.”
Dwayne was in another world, his voice drifting. “I spent all those years dreaming about a son I never even had. A son I walked away from to save. And by walking away, I killed him. You have any idea what that does to your mind?”
Was it any easier to kill a sister?
“He’d be almost thirteen now.” Dwayne’s eyes came out of the fog and landed on Brendan. They were piercing searchlights that left Brendan feeling naked.
“My woman now is wonderful. She’s helped me a great deal. She helped me see the bright side after I spoke to my wife. But we can’t have kids. She had uterine cancer when she was twenty, had a hysterectomy. She can’t ever get pregnant. God has His ways, that’s for sure.”
“What was the bright side?” Brendan asked.
“Well, you, of course.”
That didn’t make any sense. Dwayne said he had spoken to his wife last fall. He hadn’t even met Brendan until a day ago. This was one of those convenient lies adults concocted to create a sense of believability without exposing some nasty truth. Brendan had gotten good at constructing those lies, too.
“I see you don’t believe that, sounds like so much mushy, feel-good crap, right? I told you this started with Dr. Carroll and that’s where you come in.”
Brendan listened to the rest of Dwayne’s story without speaking. His hands grew hot and his throat dry, but he didn’t get any water. He wanted to stay perfectly still while Dwayne unveiled a truth that made him queasy.