Broken Angels

74

Roland felt the warm sun on his face. He heard the slap of the league ball against leather, smelled the deep redolence of neat's-foot oil. There wasn't a single cloud in the sky.

He was fifteen.

There had been ten of them that day, eleven including Charles. It was late April. They'd each had their favorite baseball player-Lenny Dyk- stra, Bobby Munoz, Kevin Jordan, and the retired Mike Schmidt among them. Half of them wore some homemade version of Mike Schmidt's jersey.

They had played a pickup game in a field near Lincoln Drive, sneaking onto a ball diamond just a few hundred yards from the creek.

Roland looked over to the trees. He saw his stepsister Charlotte there, along with her friend Annemarie. Most of the time the two girls drove him and his friends crazy. Mostly they prattled and squeaked about nothing in the world that could possibly matter. But not always, not Charlotte. Charlotte was a special girl, as special as her twin brother Charles. Like Charles, her eyes were a robin's-egg blue that shamed the springtime sky.

Charlotte and Annemarie. The two were inseparable. That day they stood in their sundresses, shimmering in the dazzling light. Charlotte wore lavender ribbons. It was a birthday party for them-they had been born on the same day, exactly two hours apart, Annemarie being the older of the two. They had met in the park when they were six, and now they had to have their party there.

At six o'clock they all heard the thunder, shortly followed by their mothers calling for them.

Roland had walked away. He picked up his mitt, and simply walked away, leaving Charlotte behind. He had left her for the devil that day, and since that day the devil had owned his soul.

To Roland, as with many people in the ministry, the devil was not an abstract. It was a real being, and could manifest itself in many forms.

He thought of the intervening years. He thought of how young he was when he opened the mission. He thought of Julianne Weber, about how she had been brutalized by a man named Joseph Barber, how Ju- lianne's mother had come to him. He had spoken to little Julianne. He thought about how he had confronted Joseph Barber in that North Philly hovel, the look in Barber's eyes when the man knew he had come to earthly judgment, how the wrath of the Lord was imminent.

Thirteen knives, Roland thought. The devil's number.

Joseph Barber. Basil Spencer. Edgar Luna.

So many others.

Had they been innocent? No. Perhaps they had not been directly responsible for what had happened to Charlotte, but they had been the devil's minions.

"There it is." Sean pulled the vehicle to the side of the road. There was a sign amid the trees, next to a narrow snowbound lane. Sean got out of the van, cleaned the fresh snow from the sign.

WELCOME TO ODENSE

Roland lowered his window.

"There's a wooden one-lane bridge a few hundred yards in," Sean said. "I remember that it used to be in pretty bad shape. Might not even be there anymore. I think I should go take a look before we drive in."

"Thank you, Brother Sean," Roland said.

Sean pulled his wool cap tighter, knotted his scarf. "I'll be right back."

He walked down the lane-slow going in the calf-deep snow-and within moments disappeared into the storm.

Roland glanced at Charles.

Charles was wringing his hands, rocking in his seat. Roland put a hand on Charles's big shoulder. It would not be long now.

Soon they would come face-to-face with Charlotte's killer.