Chasing Tomorrow

Jeff registered the loathing in his voice.

“Zimmer?”

“Fred Zimmer. He was disgusting. A lech, like you. Bxd5. Say good-bye to your knight.”

More clattering on the chessboard. Jeff tried to picture the pieces but it was so hard to focus.

“G5 to E5.” He tried to draw Cooper back into the conversation. “How did you know him?”

“He was our neighbor,” said Cooper. “He used to come over to our house and defile my mother.”

Defile. He likes that word.

“Fred Zimmer and your mother were lovers?”

“It was disgusting. Afterward he would pass me in the hall as if nothing had happened. ‘Hey, Daniel, how are you?’ ‘You wanna go to a game, Daniel?’ Zimmer turned my mother into a whore. But I brought down the Lord’s vengeance on him. On both of them.”

“What did you do?”

“I did the Lord’s will. I spilled the blood of the lamb. That was the first covenant. Ra5.”

“You killed Fred Zimmer? How?”

“Are you deaf? I said ‘the lamb.’ The lamb! Zimmer wasn’t the lamb. He was a wolf. Your move.”

Jeff tried to wade through Cooper’s deranged logic. It was like trying to swim through molasses with your arms tied behind your back. If the neighbor was the wolf . . .

“Your mother. She was the lamb?”

“I loved her so much.” Cooper started to cry. “But just as Abraham had to sacrifice his beloved son, Isaac, so I too was called by God to bring the lamb to the altar.”

“God had nothing to do with it,” Jeff said bluntly. “You murdered your own mother, Daniel. No wonder you’re so screwed up.”

“DON’T CALL ME DANIEL! I told you already.”

“You were jealous of her boyfriend, so you killed her, and then, what? Got got rid of him too, I suppose?”

Cooper was crying softly to himself.

“Jesus,” Jeff exhaled. He didn’t know what he’d expected exactly, but certainly not this. Not only was Daniel Cooper insane, but he’d been insane for a very, very long time.

“I am the instrument of the Lord.”

“Like hell you are. You’re a psychopath.”

“I am a vessel!” Cooper was growing hysterical. “The blood of the lamb will be shed for you, and for all men, so that sins may be forgiven. That’s what the Lord said. So that sins may be forgiven. ‘Do this in memory of me.’ ”

“Do what? Murder your own mother?”

“You don’t understand! My mother had to atone. To sacrifice. Just as I have had to sacrifice, to earn Tracy’s love. If Tracy had come to me in the beginning, like she should have, all of this could have been avoided.”

“Oh, so now you’re blaming Tracy? That’s not very gallant of you, Daniel.”

The chess game was apparently over. But Jeff had a strong feeling he was playing for his life. Provoking Cooper was a risky strategy, but right now it was all he had.

“Just now you said it was your mother and Zimmer who turned you into a killer. So which is it? Who’s to blame?”

“NO! STOP TALKING! My mother was perfect!”