Cross Justice (Alex Cross 23)

67

Over the course of an hour, an iced coffee, and a slice of pineapple pie, Reverend Maya told me what she knew about Paul Brown. She’d met him shortly after she had taken over the small Unitarian Universalist church in Pahokee as a first-time minister.

“I was twenty-five, right out of divinity school and sure I could change the world,” Reverend Maya said. “You wouldn’t believe it now, but back then, Pahokee was a thriving place. Everyone had jobs. People came here for jobs, including Paul Brown.”

Reverend Maya said Brown showed up at one of her evening services. He was weak and limped terribly.

“He stayed after the service,” she said. “He said he had no place to go and would be glad to clean the church if I let him sleep there. I was doubtful, but I could see he was a man in pain beyond the mere physical, and I said

yes. He ended up living in the church for about eight months, working out in the picking fields in the day, cleaning the church at night.”

I held up my hands. “Before we go any further, can you answer a couple of quick questions?”

“I’ll try.”

“After Brown died, did you call someone named Clifford Tate in Starksville, North Carolina?”

The reverend cocked her head, looked off, and then said, “Yes. I believe the name and number were in a little book I found with Mr. Brown’s things.”

The loss of my father felt strangely final then, and it must have shown on my face because Reverend Maya said, “Sergeant Drummond said he was a relative of yours?”

“I believe he was my father,” I said.

She blinked, took a big breath, said, “Oh. I didn’t know that.”

Reverend Maya said Brown seemed to be a tortured man doing his best to atone for past sins, though he was evasive when it came to discussing their nature. He rarely spoke to her, but she often found him kneeling in prayer.

“I’d ask him what he was praying for,” the minister said. “All he would say was ‘Forgiveness.’”

“He never told you what had happened? What he did?”

The minister looked conflicted and I could tell it had something to do with confidentiality between a minister and a member of the flock, even a dead member of the flock. So I told her about Jason Cross.

Reverend Maya listened raptly as I described my parents’ descent into hell. I told her how my mother had died and about my disjointed memories of what I’d believed for three and a half decades was the night my father died.

“Mr. Brown confessed some of that to me, though there were never any names used. He said he’d killed his wife because she was suffering so.”

“I think that’s true. Did he ever mention us, the children? Or his mother?”

She nodded. “He did. He said his children were living with his mother somewhere up north, and that they were doing much better without him.”

Reverend Maya said that one evening several months after Brown had appeared at her church, she’d gone to check on him. Brown wasn’t there in the little room where he lived. Then she heard a shot and found him lying dead behind the church. He’d shot himself in the face with a shotgun.

“Can I see where it happened?”

She shook her head. “The church was a termite-ridden building that was torn down about five years after I left to take over a church in West Palm. But I’d be glad to show you his grave, if you’d like.”

“His grave. I’d like that very much.”

Chapter

68

“We’ll take my car,” Reverend Maya said. “Funner.”

To my surprise, she led me to an older-model, gleaming, two-door white Mazda Miata convertible roadster.

“Do all Unitarian Universalist ministers drive sports cars?” I asked.