Prayer Read online

  Gisela smiled.

  “After Ken had image-scanned all the servers,” I said, “he started going through the accounts of their illegal clients. In addition to a huge amount of Internet porn, he found the HIDDEN website and their e-mails to and from an illegal arms company in Costa Rica. Army CID thinks that maybe these are the same people who stole a consignment of Switchblades from a military warehouse in California.”

  “Tell me they don’t yet have this Switchblade.”

  “I don’t think they’ve raised enough money. But now that their illegal Internet provider’s gone, I’d like to get a wire on the HIDDEN leader. A guy named Johnny Sack Brown. The only trouble is we think he’s using Skype for all his communications, which is peer-to-peer and offers no central location for us to get a wire on. At least that’s what Vijay in DCS Net is telling me.”

  DCS Net was the Bureau’s very own point-and-click surveillance system—simply a matter of choosing a name and telephone number on a computer screen, and clicking a mouse to tap the phone. It worked on landlines and cell phones and provided near high-fidelity digital recordings.

  “Now tell me what’s happening with those Earth Liberation Front people.”

  I started polishing my spoon; I’d finished the coffee but it helped to keep my fingers busy.

  “Get anything out of them?” she asked.

  “I don’t think either woman is interested in a plea bargain. I showed them the CCTV footage of them setting fire to the Galveston Island ranger station and the housing development next to the bird sanctuary. They’re both clearly identifiable, but they laughed in my face.”

  She nodded. “Okay. Now I’ve got something for you.”

  “If it’s another coffee, I don’t think my heart can stand it.”

  She shook her head. “When you first came to the Houston field office, you worked Violent Crimes, didn’t you?”

  “I haven’t forgotten. I still get the interesting dreams.”

  “Gil, I want you to go see Harlan Caulfield. He seems to think there might be some religious aspect to these serial killings.”

  “Is Harlan looking to dump this on DT?”

  “He’s looking for some new ideas, perhaps.”

  “Are you sure about that? The last new idea they liked here in Texas was lethal injection.”

  “An irrational attitude directed against any class of citizen could affect your security clearance, Martins. And you might try to remember that Harlan is from Texas.”

  THREE

  Where the fuck is San Saba anyway? Is it near anywhere?”

  Harlan Caulfield leaned back in his chair and clasped his big hands behind his pear-shaped head.

  “Is it near anywhere? San Saba is the pecan capital of the world, son. Otherwise it has no special characteristics.”

  “I’m glad I asked.”

  “We’ll make a Texan out of you yet, son.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about.”

  “How’s your stomach these days?” he asked, coming around the desk. He was holding a PowerPoint wireless presenter in his fingers.

  “Are you about to show me some of your clients, sir? Because if you are, I think you need to offer me a caution first. Never did much like the sight of a dead body.”

  Harlan grinned. “I knew there was a reason I didn’t like you, Gil Martins.” He sneered. “I’ll tell you when you’re going to see some heavy shit, okay?”

  He pressed a button. A series of faces, male and female, appeared on the monitor of his PC.

  “Kimberley Gaines, Gil Kever, Brent Youman, Vallie Lorine Pyle, Clarence Burge, Jr.”

  But I already knew who and what they were. Their smiling yearbook faces appeared regularly on the front page of the Chronicle; these five were the victims of a killer who was still active in the Houston-Galveston metropolitan area—all of them shot dead over the last sixteen months.

  “What all of these people have in common is that they were all good people. And I do mean good people. Normally serial killers tend to prey on the weak, the disadvantaged, or the delinquent. But these five were not only upstanding members of the community, they were also a lot more than that.

  “Kimberley Gaines was a member of the Unification Church and a registered nurse. A former Peace Corps volunteer, she recently returned from Haiti, where she’d been involved in a relief fund’s cholera treatment center. At the time of her murder, she was about to travel to Somalia as part of a United Nations effort to help the victims of a food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

  “Gil Kever was the founder of a drug-and-alcohol rehab center for homeless people here in Houston. He was not a member of any church or faith-based initiative. As well as running the center, he also raised all the money. Two years ago Kever received a humanitarian award from the Texas chapter of the Drug Free America Foundation.

  “Brent Youman was America’s only barefoot doctor. In China, where the idea originated, barefoot doctors are essentially farmers with paramedical training who act as primary health care providers at the grassroots level. Brent Youman was a fully qualified M.D. who walked around Texas treating people who couldn’t afford a doctor. Which is probably everyone who isn’t a member of the Houstonian Club.” Harlan frowned. “You’re a member of the Houstonian, aren’t you, Martins?”

  “My wife, Ruth,” I said. “She’s the one with all the money. If it wasn’t for her, they would kick my ass out of there.”

  Harlan closed his eyes and smiled. “You’ll forgive me if I hold that picture in my mind for a moment.”

  I smiled. “Drop by sometime and we’ll have a game of tennis.”

  “My days of playing tennis are behind me.” His eyes narrowed. “Brent Youman. Just before his murder, he’d been nominated for some prize for people who have made an outstanding contribution to public health. He won the award posthumously and it was presented in absentia at a special ceremony during the World Health Assembly.”

  I shook my head and moved my BlackBerry at right angles to my pen and my notepad; there wasn’t anything really wrong with the way it was lying there before, but I can’t abide my stuff looking any other way than neat and tidy; besides, it was something better to do with my hands.

  “Sounds as if he was a helluva guy.”

  “You’re beginning to get it. Look, nobody deserves to be murdered. Well, maybe a few. But there are some people whose behavior leads you to suppose that they deserved better than a bullet in the head. Vallie Lorine Pyle and Clarence Burge, Jr., were no different. Vallie Pyle was the founder of Kidneys ‘R’ Us. That’s not a joke, by the way, but an altruistic kidney donation network based here in Houston. Since donating one of her own kidneys to a complete stranger, Vallie Pyle had organized the donation of almost seventy kidneys before she was murdered. Clarence Burge was a Catholic priest from Texas City. After Hurricane Katrina, he gave up the church and set up a construction company to rebuild schools that were destroyed. Working mostly by himself, he succeeded in rebuilding five.”

  “What do the behavioral science guys have to say?”

  “That the victims were picked because they were morally distinguished. That the perp is someone who hates good people. Or is someone jealous of their goodness, who would like to be good himself.”

  “A crime like this makes a lot more sense if the perp thinks of himself as someone evil fighting against the forces of good. A sort of hellfire club, devil’s disciple sort of guy.”

  “Which means what?”

  “I used to be interested in that kind of shit,” I said. “You know, books about devil worship?”

  “Are there any Satanists or devil worshippers around that you know about?”

  “Oh, I’m sure there are. This is America and there’s a First Amendment right to practice any kind of religion.”

  “I’m not talking about religion, Martins,” said Harlan. “I�
��m talking about witchcraft and shit like that.”

  “Under the First Amendment, anyone has the right to call more or less anything a religion. Today the Salem witches could probably claim protection under the Free Exercise Clause, even if they were guilty. But there aren’t any such groups I know of in Texas that demonstrate predication—whose ideology would make them federal meat. But I can look into it for you, if you like.”

  “I’m all out of good ideas on this one. Lousy ones, too, if I’m honest. So, go ahead.”

  I collected my stuff off his desk and started to get up from my chair.

  “Wait a minute,” said Harlan. “You don’t get to leave until you’ve seen the whole show.”

  He picked up the PowerPoint presenter and started to move through some grisly-looking mortuary shots. All of the vics had been shot at close range several times with a small-caliber weapon—that much was plain from the entry wounds in their heads and faces. Brent Youman had taken one bullet through the eye, which had burst out of its socket like an oyster hanging off the edge of its shell. The exit wounds were rather more spectacular; the back of Vallie Pyle’s skull had been blown clean away to reveal a whole damn butcher’s counter of brain and tissue.

  “They were all shot with a .22-caliber Walther,” said Harlan. “Firing a flat-nosed short round from a weapon fitted with a Gemtech sound suppressor. He almost always shoots at night or first thing in the morning and operates just out of range of any CCTV cameras.”

  “So he doesn’t want to get his picture in the newspaper.”

  “Oh, I’ll get him. Even if I have to walk around the city in a nun’s habit singing hymns, I’ll get this sonofabitch.”

  I thought about making a joke about that and then flicked the idea away. Harlan was much too unpredictable to meet head-on with a joke about cross-dressing FBI agents.

  “I see the first victim was shot on June 29,” I said.

  “What about it?”

  “It’s the feast of St. Peter and St. Paul. In the Roman Catholic calendar of saints, it’s a holy day.”

  Harlan handed me a printed sheet of paper. “Any of these other dates mean anything to you?”

  I glanced down the list. “No.”

  “You a Catholic, Martins?”

  “You could call me an atheist who goes to church. Or maybe an agnostic. I don’t know.”

  Harlan grinned. “My wife, Molly, is the one who’s sweet on Jesus. I just go along because it’s easier than having an argument and missing Sunday dinner. By the same token, she comes along to see the Astros although she stopped believing in them a long time ago.”

  “That’s the kind of atheism it’s easy to understand.”

  Harlan let that one go; the case for believing in the Houston Astros was, by any measure, indefensible.

  “Which church is it that you go to, son?”

  “Lakewood.”

  “The hell you say. Lakewood’s my church.” Harlan smiled again. “How come I never saw you there, Martins?”

  “That’s a little like asking how come you never see me at the ball game. Astros would be glad of a regular crowd like the one they get at Lakewood.”

  “Is that how you and your wife met? At Lakewood?”

  “We met as law students at Harvard. We were neither of us particularly religious then. Until we lived in Houston. We started going to Lakewood Church because we were both believers then. Me included. Although in my case, I’ve really forgotten why.”

  “Now I get it. You blame Texas for giving her the sweet talk about the Lord’s love, don’t you? She’s got her pussy all wet for Jesus and you figure it’s us who have messed her panties up.”

  “No.”

  “Sure you do. It’s as obvious as a turd in a punch bowl.” He shook his head. “Let me tell you something, son. This has got nothing to do with Texas.” Harlan grinned. “Plenty of Texans don’t believe in God. Haven’t you figured it out? That’s why we have so many guns. In case he’s not there.”

  FOUR

  In most churches I could have dozed through the Sunday-morning service and no one would have noticed. But Lakewood was an interactive sort of church, and the service was more like a Las Vegas show. It was loud and demanded lots of audience participation, singing or just bouncing with the joy of Jesus. When we’d first started going there, I liked that. But not lately. Personally, I couldn’t have felt less like bouncing if my feet had been nailed to the floor.

  By contrast, Ruth was in a state of ecstasy. Her eyes were closed, a beatific smile illuminated her face, and her hands were raised in the air as if she were hoping to catch a few beams of God’s heavenly grace. She was putting her whole being into singing along with the choir and the twenty-piece rock orchestra—aka the Lakewood Church Worship Team—not to mention the huge and rapturous congregation that was also involved in this deafening act of modern worship. The words to all of the Lakewood worship songs—no one called them hymns, because you can’t sell hymns on a ten-dollar CD in the church shop—were streaming onto a giant screen above our heads, but Ruth hardly needed them. She knew the words the way I know a meaningful Miranda warning.

  Of course, Ruth was hardly alone in her ecstasy. Near the front of the church, and just a couple of rows behind the pastor and the Barbie with a Bible who was his Alabama rose of a wife, it seemed that everyone was more than a little touched with the Holy Spirit. People were clapping their hands and touching their hearts and punching the air and shouting “Hallelujah!” as if they’d just won the Texas state lottery or sent a third man named Bush to the White House.

  Everyone except me, that is. I sat down whenever I felt I could get away with it; and when I was standing, I was smiling a shit-eating grin every time one of my proclaiming neighbors met my shifty eyes. But it was Ruth’s eyes I most wanted to avoid. I sat down and bowed my head and hoped it might be mistaken for prayer.

  Feeling an elbow dug in my side, I opened my eyes with a start and met Ruth’s penetrating stare; and satisfied that she now had my attention, she nodded at my crossed leg where the Velcro ankle holster carrying my baby Glock 26 was now fully exposed.

  I shrugged sheepishly and placed my feet on the floor so the Glock was no longer in sight, but it was too late; Ruth was shaking her head. I had been judged and found wanting. Especially so on top of the even more inexcusable offense I had given the previous evening. While I was watching the Celtics on TV, Ruth had vacuumed my study and discovered my secret store of carefully arranged but forbidden books. Not a collection of choice pornography, but a small library of “new atheist” authors who argued that religion should not simply be tolerated, but actively exposed as a fraud by rational argument—guys such as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and Houston’s very own iconoclast, Philip Osborne. Ruth regarded these writers as the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

  “Honey,” she said, brandishing a copy of God Is Not Great, which I thought the best of all my atheist-porn books, “I can’t believe you’re reading this. I thought ours was a Christian home.”

  “Ruth, it is. I see the tithe that leaves my bank account for Lakewood Church every month.”

  “Not if you’re reading books by Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.”

  “Do you really think that reading a book by Christopher Hitchens makes you an atheist? Reading the Bible doesn’t make you a Christian. There are plenty of atheists who read the Bible.”

  Reluctantly, I turned the sound off on the game to give her my full attention, which I didn’t want to do as the Boston Celtics were my team, but there was now no way of avoiding this discussion. Not any longer. We both knew it was long overdue.

  Ruth sighed. “And what if Danny asks you about atheism? And about Charles Darwin. What are you going to tell him?”

  “You want to tell him that creationism provides all the answers, then that’s fine by me, that’s exactly wh
at we’ll tell him. I think a kid needs religion when he’s growing up. I mean, I know I did.”

  “And when you’re an adult, what? You put away childish things?”

  “Look, what I believe is of no real importance here compared with what I am prepared to pay lip service to, for the sake of family harmony.”

  “What if I wasn’t here? If I had a car accident and I wasn’t around anymore. What would happen then?”

  “In a situation like that, who can say how anyone will react?”

  “Is this what you’re telling me?”

  “I was watching TV, remember? You’re the one who set this crazy debate into motion.”

  “You think it’s crazy to talk about the moral welfare and education of our son?”

  “It seems to me we’re having a fight that neither of us can win. After all, you can no more prove the existence of God than I can prove he doesn’t.”

  For a moment Ruth looked as if she were trying to swallow something indigestible, and I felt sorry for her because I could see the dilemma she had—that we both had. Whereas before we had loved each other because of what we had in common, it was beginning to look as if we were going to have to love each other in spite of our differences. My own parents had managed this very well. Maybe that’s why I felt that this present difficulty was not at all insurmountable.

  Ruth tossed Hitchens’s book onto the La-Z-Boy and went out of the TV room without another word. This suited me fine as the Boston Celtics were now back in front.

  But then, right after Sunday-morning service, she started it all up again.

  “Well, that was embarrassing,” she said.

  “Sorry.”

  “Actually, it wasn’t the gun I was referring to,” she said. “No, you looked like you were a million miles away. That’s what I’m talking about. We used to worship like a family, and I just had to look at you, Gil, to know that your heart was in it, too. But not anymore.”

  She was right, of course. And I didn’t need to insult her intelligence by denying it. I sensed another argument was coming my way so it was fortunate Danny was already asleep. After 140 minutes of Lakewood, I could hardly blame him. I was looking forward to a Sunday-afternoon nap on a lounger at the Houstonian Club myself.