David and Martha had been natural partners for this job, since they were both single. And since they were already conducting a somewhat secret investigation of their own, Martha had readily agreed when Becca had called, asking her to do twice-weekly shifts with the preacher. This was the third time they’d been up here, and she’d been grasping for a way to spend those two hours that didn’t involve constant battles with the thoughts in her head.
She’d asked him if he’d made any personal friends since joining the ministry. He’d mentioned Ron Everson. When she asked if they were still friends and he’d said no, it just seemed natural to ask why. Eventually, with far more questions than it should have required, she got the whole story out of him.
“Yeah, I visited him in jail.”
Turning almost completely in her seat so she could see him clearly as he lounged behind her, Martha drew out the word. “Why?”
It made no sense to her.
“Because he was there. Alone. Suffering.”
“He deserved to suffer.”
“He was my friend. I cared about him.”
“He killed his wife!” Hell, Todd had ceased being her friend for much less than murder. “Who was also your friend, by the way.”
David nodded.
“I don’t get it.” Martha propped her arms on the seat and leaned her head against them, peering at him in the near darkness of that mid-March Wednesday evening. “How could you respect him, stand to be with him, after that?” She hadn’t even been able to look at a picture of Todd without wanting to spit at it.
David turned his head. He didn’t resemble a stereotyped preacher at all. He was relaxed, wearing a corduroy, button-down shirt, and his long legs, in the Dockers he wore most often, were stretched out beneath the dash.
“I could stand to be with him because no matter what, he was still a child of God,” he said. “I abhorred what he did. But then, so did he.” He paused, staring at the ceiling, as though remembering another place, another time. And then he turned that stare on her again.
“He was a sick man. He had a jealous streak a mile wide. But the other parts of him, the parts that were loyal and loving, the parts that were sensitive and honest and hardworking, were still there, too. Killing his wife was a heinous crime and demanded the most severe punishment, but it didn’t eradicate his soul. I believe that every human being, no matter who he or she might be, is a loving spirit. I connected with Ron’s many years before he committed that crime. And it was still there afterward.”
Sitting back in her seat, Martha was glad for the darkness around them as she digested his words. There was something about them that wouldn’t let her go. Something she didn’t want to acknowledge. Probably because she was going to disagree with it, then he’d get pompous and arrogant in his certainty, and she’d have to get mad at him again.
She hadn’t been mad at him in over a week. Of course, she’d come to more or less accept that he lived in heavenly clouds instead of mundane reality. That fact didn’t bother her as
much since their trip to Phoenix. Now that she knew he did occasionally come down to earth.
Everyone needed a fluffy cloud to hide in once in a while, and it was his business to provide them.
She wondered if Todd ever needed fluffy clouds. If he’d needed them while he was married to her. That led to images of Todd when he’d still been a member of their family. Was he still good about helping around the house? Did he—
She caught herself just before she exclaimed out loud as she realized she’d just had her first thought of him that hadn’t been accompanied by debilitating anger and a helpless sense of betrayal.
Her first positive reaction to her ex-husband in four years.
“What are you thinking about?”
The man’s powers of observation were uncanny.
“A student commercial we’re taping tomorrow. Just running through the script to make sure I covered everything.”
“Liar.”
Maybe. But he couldn’t prove it.
MOWING THE GRASS in the dark wasn’t the most sensible thing he’d ever done. He didn’t actually have to mow it at all. The church provided landscapers to keep up both the churchyard and his own. Mostly they trimmed bushes, pulled weeds, raked pebbles. The only patch of grass in the predominately desert landscaping was just outside the sliding glass door in the back of his house. And the only mower he’d been able to scrape up from the large tool shed behind the church had been an old-fashioned push machine, not a gas or electric version like the ones he’d used as a boy.
Something to thank the angels for. This kind made little noise to disturb any neighbors who might take exception to his mowing the lawn at eleven o’clock at night. When he was a young man being shuffled from foster home to foster home, mowing lawns had saved his life. He could be alone out there, unable to hear over the noise of the motor, isolated from all the people around him. The smell of the grass was always so strong, reminding him that there was life outside the walls trapping him in a world where he didn’t want to be. The money he’d made had given him his first taste of freedom. And in the end, his way out.
He grunted. Pushed. His movements became rhythmical as he worked his way down one strip and then turned to start a second, back the way he’d come.
Back the way he’d come. Was that what he was doing? Suddenly, without his being aware of it, all his newfound peace was being challenged by things from his past. Not only because of Ellen’s attack. But with her mother.