Vox(59)

I’m also thinking about what Patrick would have done if, instead of Julia, it was me who Reverend Carl tore from my home and made stand in front of television cameras before shipping me off to a life of silence and servitude. Would he come after me?

Lorenzo would, but not Patrick.

“Where do you think he went?” I say, turning on the shower. “Steven, I mean.” Julia might be anywhere—up the coast, inland, across the country in a California orange grove. “Finding her would be like finding a black cat in a coal cellar.”

Patrick shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Let me show you something.” He leaves me in the bathroom and goes to the nightstand on his side of the bed. “What the hell?”

The lie’s already prepared, and easier to recite when I’m not looking him in the eyes. “Damn handle came off last night. Don’t you remember?”

There’s a pause while he thinks this over. Finally, I hear the jangle of keys and a single, perplexed “Huh” from the bedroom before I escape into the shower.

“I’ll make you some tea if you want,” Patrick calls. “When you’re done, come to my office. I think I know where Steven’s headed.”

I take the quickest shower of my life, comb out unwashed hair, and dress in loose jeans and a linen shirt that I don’t have to tuck in. Screw the dress code; I’m hot, rushed, and pregnant. Then I go down the hall into Patrick’s study.

Reverend Carl’s face fills the screen, and his hands are held up as if in prayer. It’s his preferred speaking pose. The news camera trained on him tracks back, opening up the shot to reveal the rest of the stage. Julia King is unrecognizable.

They’ve shaved her, of course—I expected that. I didn’t expect the job to be so half-assed, like an amateur sheepshearing by a blind man with palsy. Clumps of remaining hair stick in rusty patches on her head.

“What did they do, use a dull straight razor?” I say, not taking my eyes off the image on Patrick’s laptop. Steven has seen this, was forced to watch and join in his classmates’ name-calling.

Reverend Carl calls his audience to prayer and bows his head. “Lord, forgive our wayward daughter, and guide her as she joins her sisters in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Amen.” A chorus of shouts and hisses follows the prayer. A few people echo “Amen,” but mostly it’s a hate-fest. Reverend Carl presses the air under his raised hands and calls for silence, but when he lifts his head toward the cameras, I see the faintest of smiles on his lips.

Now the camera closes in, tight, on Julia’s tear-streaked face. Her lips tremble, and her eyes search from left to right, looking for a shred of sympathy among the shouters. Reverend Carl’s hand appears on her shoulder, and she shirks away, but the hand seems only to clench more tightly, fingers digging into her clavicle under the gray material. It fits high on her neck and has long sleeves. She must be dying in this heat.

It isn’t the first time I think about how much I hate Reverend Carl Corbin, but it is the first time I want to kill him.





FORTY-NINE




If I’d spent my last few minutes at home looking out our front window instead of unknotting my hair, I might have seen the anonymous black SUV parked across the street, its engine running and puffing out streams of exhaust smoke.

But I didn’t. By the time I walk out the side door and start my car, it’s too late.

Del the mailman is already up the porch steps, courier bag over his shoulder, his key to our mailbox in one hand. He waves to me, and I wave back through the Honda’s rear window.

The realization hits me like a tidal wave: keys, an envelope, Del peeking inside the mailbox yesterday and removing a single item, Sharon warning me about an underground organization that’s using a mailman as its go-between. And, finally, Patrick’s words last night after he told me what Olivia had done to herself, there in her bedroom, with the Dictaphone repeating its endless loop of her own words.

We’re doing everything we can.

When the dots connect, I’m left with one terrible, frightening, and at the same time relieving explanation: Patrick isn’t working for the government. He’s working against it.

I pull halfway out of the driveway, stopping when I’m in line with the porch. Del opens the mailbox, careful to shield his hands from the street and the porch camera. I want to shout at him. Stop! Stop! Don’t open it!

He slides the manila envelope out, holding it close and hiding it in his courier bag before relocking the mailbox. He won’t hear Poe’s silent steps behind him, coming up the walk, climbing the porch stairs. He won’t hear the quiet click and hum of the black stun gun in Poe’s massive right hand, or the crackle as it presses against his ribs, shocking him twice—first in his body, then in his mind.

Poe turns toward me and waves me down the driveway, as if to say Move along now. Nothing to see here.

And now two more men rush up to the house from the black car across the street. They lift Del by the armpits, dragging his rag-doll body down the steps, along the path, and to the car while I wait helplessly to see if Poe rings our doorbell and repeats the show with Patrick.

He doesn’t; he only walks away from our house, folds himself into the rear seat of the black car next to an unconscious Del, and waits for me to drive away. Then the black car pulls from the curb, following my Honda all the way to Connecticut Avenue, where it turns and heads south. It crosses my mind to reverse course and go to the Rays’ farm to warn Sharon, but I shunt the thought aside. I’d be caught or too late or—best case—have Morgan all over my ass for not showing up to work on time.