City of Night

Chapter 47

Carson sat across the kitchen table from Lulana St. John, cater-corner to Pastor Kenny Laffite.

Michael stood near the cooktop, where Evangeline was heating a Mason jar frill of milk in a pot of water.

“Heating it directly in a pan,” she told Michael, “you risk scalding it.”

“Then it gets a skin, doesn’t it?” he asked.

She grimaced. “Burnt scum on the bottom and skin on top.”

The minister sat with his arms on the table, staring with horror at his hands. “I just suddenly realized I did it. Just by being me, I killed him. And killing is forbidden.”

“Pastor Laffite,” Carson said, “you are not required by law to answer our questions without your attorney present. Do you want to call your attorney?”

“This good man didn’t kill anybody,” Lulana protested. “Whatever happened it was an accident.”

Carson and Michael had already conducted a quick search of the house and had not found either a dead body or any signs of violence.

“Pastor Laffite,” Carson said, “please look at me.”

The minister kept staring at his hands. His eyes were opened as wide as eyes could be, and they weren’t blinking.

“Pastor Laffite,” she said, “forgive me, but you seem zoned-out and wigged-out at the same time. I’m concerned that you may recently have used an illegal drug.”

“The moment I woke up,” said the minister, “he was dead or soon to be. Just by waking up, I killed him.”

“Pastor Laffite, do you understand that anything you say to me now could be used against you in a court of law?”

“This good man won’t ever be in a court of law,” Lulana said. “He’s just confused somehow. That’s why I wanted you two instead of others. I knew you wouldn’t leap to conclusions.”

The minister’s eyes had still not blinked. They weren’t tearing up, either. They should have started to tear up from not blinking.

From his post by the cooktop, Michael said, “Pastor, who is it you think you killed?”

“I killed Pastor Kenny Laffite,” the minister said.

Lulana gave herself to surprise with some enthusiasm, pulling her head back, letting her jaw drop, putting one hand to her bosom. “Praise the Lord, Pastor Kenny, you can’t have killed yourself. You’re sitting right here with us.”

He switched from zoned to wigged again: “See, see, see, it’s like this, it’s fundamental. I’m not permitted to kill. But by the very fact of my existence, by the very fact, I am at least partly responsible for his death, so on the very day of my creation, I was in violation of my program. My program is flawed. If my program is flawed, what else might I do that I’m not supposed to do, what else, what else, what else?”

Carson glanced at Michael.

He had been leaning casually against the counter by the cooktop. He was standing tall now, his hands hanging loose at his sides.

“Pastor Kenny,” Lulana said, taking one of his hands in both of hers, “you’ve been under a terrible stress, tryin’ to raise funds for the church remodel on top of all your other duties —”

“— five weddings in one month,” Evangeline added. Holding the Mason jar with an oven mitt, she poured warm milk into a glass. “And three funerals besides.”

Carson eased her chair back from the table as Lulana said, “And all of this work you’ve had to do without the comfort of a wife. It’s no surprise you’re exhausted and distressed.”

Spooning sugar into the milk, Evangeline said, “Our own Uncle Absalom worked himself to the bone without the comfort of a wife, and one day he started seeing fairies.”

“By which she means not homosexuals,” Lulana assured Laffite, “but the little creatures with wings.”

Carson rose from her chair and took a step away from the table as Evangeline, adding several drops of vanilla extract to the milk, said, “Seeing fairies was nothing to be ashamed about. Uncle Absalom just needed some rest, some tender care, and he was fine, never saw fairies again.”

“I’m not supposed to kill people, but by the very fact of my existence, I killed Kenny Laffite,” said Kenny Laffite, “and I really want to kill more.”

“That’s just weariness talking,” Lulana assured him, and patted his hand. “Crazy weariness, that’s all, Pastor Kenny. You don’t want to kill anyone.”

“I do,” he disagreed. He closed his eyes and hung his head. “And now if my program is flawed, maybe I will. I want to kill all of you, and maybe I will.”

Michael blocked Evangeline from carrying the glass of milk to the table.

Executing a smooth cross-body draw of the Desert Eagle from the scabbard on her left hip, gripping it in two hands, Carson said, “Lulana, you said when we first came that you stopped by to bring Pastor Laffite two pies.”

Lulana’s molasses-brown eyes were huge and focused on the golden gun. “Carson O’Connor, this is an overreaction not worthy of you. This poor —”

“Lulana,” Carson interrupted with the slightest edge in her voice, “why don’t you get one of those pies out of the refrigerator and cut some for all of us.”

With his head still hung, with his chin on his chest and eyes closed, Laffite said, “My program’s breaking down. I can feel it happening… sort of a slow-motion stroke. Lines of installed code falling out, falling off, like a long row of electrified birds dropping off a power line.”

Evangeline Antoine said, “Sister, maybe that pie would be a good idea.”

As Lulana, on further consideration, pushed her chair away from the table and got to her feet, Michael’s cell phone rang.

Laffite raised his head but did not open his eyes. The rapid eye movement behind his closed lids was that of a man experiencing vivid dreams.

Michael’s phone rang again, and Carson said, “Don’t let it go to voice mail.”

As Lulana moved not toward the refrigerator but instead toward her sister and out of the line of fire, Laffite said, “How odd that this should be happening to an Alpha.”

Carson heard Michael giving the address of the parsonage to the caller.

As his eyes continued to roll and twitch under his lids, Laffite said, “ ‘The thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.’”

“Job three, verse twenty-five,” said Lulana.

“ ‘Fear came upon me,’” Laffite continued, “ ‘and trembling, which made all my bones to shake.’”

“Job four, verse fourteen,” said Evangeline.

To reach either the door to the back porch or the door to the hallway, the sisters would have had to pass into the line of fire. They huddled together in the safest corner of the kitchen that they could find.

Having concluded his phone call, Michael positioned himself to Carson’s left, between Laffite and the sisters, his own.50 Magnum in a two-hand grip.

“ ‘Gather me the people together,’” said Laffite, “ ‘and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth.’”

“Deuteronomy,” Lulana said.

“Chapter four, verse ten,” Evangeline added.

“Deucalion?” Carson murmured, referring to the phone call.

“Yeah.”

Laffite opened his eyes. “I’ve revealed myself to you. Further proof that my program is breaking down. We must move secretly among you, never revealing our difference or our purpose.”

“We’re cool,” Michael told him. “We don’t have a problem with it. Just sit for a while, Pastor Kenny, just sit there and watch the little birds dropping off the wire.”