Again Vince couldn’t agree more. “People got beer trees growing in their front yards.”
“Listen, morons,” I say, “I wasn’t drafted. I’m going up there because I want to. It’s an important case… a kid’s life is on the line.”
“Right,” Pete says.
“Sure,” Vince agrees.
They think I’m going up there to win Laurie back, and the case is my excuse.
They’re wrong.
Probably.
• • • • •
I USE THE RETURN flight to read the report Kevin has prepared. He went online to learn whatever is available about the Centurion religion and the town of Center City. He could not find the five-year-old articles to which Laurie referred, but he found references to them.
Kevin learned some striking things about the religion. Apparently, they don’t just believe that they are on a blessed piece of land. They also believe that God speaks to them, through their leader, and thus directs their lives. The device through which God communicates is some kind of wheel, which sits in the town hall. That town hall is in the center of the town, which in their mind makes it the absolute center of the spiritual universe.
The Centurion version of a priest or rabbi, the leader of the flock, is called the Keeper, short for “Keeper of the wheel.” The current Keeper is Clayton Wallace, who has held the title for almost four years, since the death of the previous Keeper. Keepers are apparently elected by the other leaders of the church, like popes.
Very surprising, to both Kevin and me, is the total lack of effort the Centurions make to recruit outsiders. They have no desire to convert, or even interact with, the outside world. The town and the people in it are subject to the laws of the state and the country, and they offer no resistance to those laws, but they very strictly maintain as much separation as possible.
Kevin relates the Centurions’ belief that the land they occupy will be the only land left intact when Armageddon comes. The extent of my knowledge of Armageddon is that Ben Affleck and Bruce Willis were in it, so I’m not all that interested.
I land at the airport and go straight to my rented house, having called Laurie and told her of my impending arrival. She is there waiting for me with Tara.
I invite her in, and she seems to hesitate and look around for a moment before accepting. “Something wrong?” I ask.
“No… it’s just that we’re on opposite sides of this, Andy, at least in terms of our jobs.”
I nod my understanding. “I won’t ask you to compromise that, and I won’t intentionally put you in an uncomfortable position.”
“I know that,” she says, and comes inside the house.
We enter the kitchen, which represents the first time I’ve been in it; I had previously neglected to check the house further once I discovered the cable TV. “I’m sorry I have nothing to offer you,” I say as I open a cabinet, “but I haven’t had time to…”
I stop talking because I see that the cabinets are filled with groceries of all kinds. I look at Laurie, who smiles. “It’s my ‘welcome to Findlay’ present,” she says.
“I thought you gave me that the other night.”
She shakes her head. “That was my present to myself.”
“You were amazing,” I say. “Almost like you’ve been practicing.”
“Andy…” is how she admonishes me for prying. Then, “I’ve been doing some thinking. I’m the one who left… and now you’re here to do me a favor. I’ve got to be careful not to take advantage of the situation.”
“So… ,” I prompt.
“So I want you to take the lead, okay? You decide where this goes and how long it goes there.”
I understand what she’s saying, but taking the lead in a romantic relationship runs counter to my normal style. “That’s fair, but I don’t know yet which way I want it to go,” I say in a rare burst of honesty. “I’m not going to be here forever, and I found out that I wasn’t crazy about being dumped.”
She nods her understanding. “I know that. I wasn’t wild about doing it. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
I notice something in the cabinet. “Pistachio nuts. You got me pistachio nuts.” Pistachios are among my favorite things in life, and if there were a professional pistachio speed-eating league, I’d be an even richer man today.
She smiles. “And tangerines. And cut-up honeydew melon. And potato chips. And”-she does a little drumroll on the table with her hands-“Raisinets.”
We kiss again, more romantically this time, but it doesn’t lead to sex. I guess since I’ve just been appointed the leader, it’s my fault that it doesn’t. That’s something I’ll have to get used to.
Instead we talk about the case, and I ask her if she has any recommendations for private investigators I can call on. She says that this area is not exactly a hotbed of investigative talent but that she’ll come up with some names.
“By the way,” I ask, “do you think the Davidson farm is worth a quarter of a million dollars?”
She laughs. “Only if they found oil on it.”
This confirms my worst financial fears. Richard Davidson barely has enough money to hire a public defender, but he was not about to let that stand in the way of doing the best he can for his son. He probably decided he’d just have to figure it out as he goes along.
“Anything new in the investigation?” I ask. “You find out who firebombed my client’s house?”
She hesitates. “That’s really something I can’t share with you. You need to go through channels.”
I understand what she’s saying and regret forcing her to say it. I’m going to be seeking a great deal of information in the normal course of pretrial discovery, and I will have to get it from the prosecution, not the police.
“Sorry. I guess I’ll just have to start torturing Lester Chapman.”
She smiles. “I’m sure he’s expecting nothing less. By the way, Andy, don’t underestimate him. He’s actually very good.”
I return the smile. “So am I, babe. So am I.”
• • • • •
CALVIN WANTS TO use my house as our base of operations. It’s fine with me, since this way I’ll spend more time with Tara, but I had just assumed we’d use his office. “Why?” I ask him.
“Because you’ve got a refrigerator, and I’ll shame you into keeping it stocked with beer.”
“What kind do you like?”
“The kind that says ‘beer’ on the label.”
I go out to fulfill Calvin’s request, a rather easy task in this area. In addition to the national beers, there is an entire wall of beers I’ve never heard of, which are brewed locally. I let the clerk advise me on three of the best, and I buy enough to stock the entire upper shelf of the refrigerator.
A few minutes after I get home, Calvin arrives. He opens the refrigerator and nods approvingly at my efforts. He takes a beer out, opens it, and then finds a comfortable spot on the couch in the den on which to enjoy it. “Okay, let’s talk about our case,” he says.
“First we need to talk about your fee,” I say.
He holds up the bottle. “I’m drinking it.”
“Richard Davidson wants to mortgage his farm,” I say.
He laughs. “Yeah, right.” Then, “I thought you were already rich.”
“I am.”
He smiles and holds up the bottle again, showing it to me. “Me too. So let’s talk about the case.”
Since we’re only starting to receive discovery material, we don’t have many facts to go on, yet some potential investigative tracks are quite clear. First of all, we need to look into the lives of the victims, Elizabeth Barlow and Sheryl Hendricks. They were murdered by someone, that much we know, and we have to operate on the assumption that the killer is not our client. Therefore, by knowing who these young women were, and who they knew, we could hit upon the real killer. Or at least some potential killers that we can point to.