Covenant

37

Casey Jeffs stood alone and immobile in the office of Kelvin Patterson, a towering hulk of a man dressed in blue overalls, his face half hidden by a mop of lank blond hair. Reverentially, he knelt down in front of the small altar and looked up at the towering chromed cross as he clasped his hands before him.

“I din’ mean to cause trouble,” he whispered. “I din’ mean it.”

Jeffs knelt for a long time, grinding his hands before him and closing his eyes tightly, as though the mere action of doing so could wipe away his anxiety and fear.

“I din’ meant it,” he whispered again.

“I know you didn’t, Casey.”

Casey’s head jerked up as he gasped and leaped to his feet, and Patterson saw the flare of alarm in his bright blue eyes, the feeble mind behind them unable to account for Patterson’s sudden materialization. Patterson stepped from behind the altar and shook one of Casey’s giant hands in his. Casey stooped when upright, partly because of his height and partly because he had long taken to hiding from an uncaring world behind his fringe of hair. He glanced behind him at the office door, still closed, and then looked at Patterson.

“Where’d you come from?” he asked, his tone rigid with awe.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Casey,” Patterson said. “Now, you have something to tell me?”

Casey’s blue eyes flickered anxiously. “They’re not comin’ here, Pastor? That right? The police ain’t comin’ here for me?”

“No, Casey, they’re not coming here. Let’s sit down, shall we?” Patterson suggested.

The pastor lead Casey to the magnificent mahogany desk that dominated his spacious office, a large bronze eagle mounted on one edge and a small American flag on the other. The sunlight flooding the office from beyond the rolling hills and valleys of Virginia flared off the giant chrome crucifix, sending reflections flickering around the room.

Patterson poured Casey a cup of water from a cooler near the window before sitting down opposite him and watching as he sipped.

“So, did something happen today at the hospital?”

Casey’s features were cast in simple slabs, the round blue eyes gazing at Patterson from behind the floppy blond hair.

“The police were at the hospital askin’ questions, though I din’ hear all of it.”

Casey Jeff’s voice was monotone, as though somebody had removed the soul from his chest and replaced it with a recording. Complex potions conspired to quell the wayward neurons of Casey and his fellow patients, stifling their psychosis in a frozen fog of sedatives and binding their self-destructive urges in chemical chains. In the case of Patterson’s loyal protégé, they served well enough to keep him occupied as a useful source of information within the institute, at least until anything unexpected spooked him into fleeing.

“The police weren’t there to speak to you, Casey,” Patterson reassured him. “Just you tell me what you did hear.”

“I couldn’t get close,” Casey mumbled, “but they was talkin’ about experiments of some kind, that Daniel Neville may have been hurt. What does that mean, Pastor?”

“It means that Daniel has suffered,” Patterson said, “and that we should pray for him.”

Casey nodded robotically. “We could help him.”

“Do you think that we should, Casey?”

Casey’s rudimentary features twitched into a smile for the first time since entering the office. Entrusted with a decision, Casey felt secure again. Patterson smiled back on cue as little insects of loathing scuttled across his skin.

The truth was that Kelvin Patterson despised Casey Jeffs. Casey was a psychotic shambles who would be unable to walk the streets were it not for the advances in medical science over the past forty years. But Patterson was also fascinated by the mentally afflicted. How did their minds work? What did they see? Hear? Taste? For Patterson, the conscience of the mentally ill represented a simple and yet unreachable unknown every bit as unfathomable as the nature of God Himself, and the similarities bothered him immensely. Narrow was the line between genius and insanity. Was it not true that the savant was also vulnerable, a genius shackled to the unstable foundations of a crumbling mind?

He looked down at his desk to a drawer where he kept his own medications, those that he took when even the brightest of days seemed overcast, shadowed with dense and bottomless pits of despair that seemed to draw him in with powerful gravitational fields.

“Yes, I do. How should we help him?”

Casey’s voice made the pastor jump. He had briefly forgotten that he was there.

Since his gradual recovery from terminal psychosis, when medical science had plucked him from oblivion, Casey Jeffs had been employed as a handyman undertaking menial tasks at the institute. The employment served as a valuable psychological anchor amid a strange and often hostile world. In these modern days of empowerment to the weak and support of the needy, Casey’s apparent success in leading a near-normal life was held by the institute as a symbol of the power of rehabilitation. The meek shall inherit the Earth, Patterson reflected as he looked into Casey’s innocent features. But the meek needed those who could lead the way, the shepherd to their flock. Patterson knew that he himself represented the closest thing to a father and a family that Casey had ever known.

“We should ease his suffering, and help him to find God,” Patterson responded. “Daniel has suffered enough, hasn’t he?”

Casey nodded seriously. “We all have, Pastor.”

Patterson wondered where Casey might have picked up the reply, doubtful that it could have tumbled unbidden from the confused miasma of his own mind. Daniel Neville had been allowed to live in order to study why he alone had survived the experiments, but now he was a liability that Patterson could not afford.

“Did the police officers actually see Daniel Neville?” he asked.

“One of them did.” Casey nodded. “They let him into the room for a moment.”

Patterson nodded slowly, and made his decision.

“You remember what we spoke of, Casey? That we would do it just like we did before?”

The blue eyes twinkled. “Yes, boss, I know what to do.” A flicker of doubt appeared. “Will it be like last time? The police made me think about the last time, about how—”

Patterson overcame his revulsion as he reached out and patted the back of Casey’s hand.

“It won’t be like last time, Casey, and even if it is, I will protect you when you need me.”

The childlike relief in Casey’s eyes contrasted with the lumbering movements of his body as he stood from his chair and loped out of the office. Patterson leaned back in his chair and looked down at his desk. There a broadsheet was emblazoned with an image of Senator Isaiah Black alongside the results of the most recent polls. Patterson bit his lip as he read.

Black’s popularity had increased in spite of, or perhaps because of, his distancing himself from the American Evangelical Alliance. Patterson felt his eyeballs surging briefly in their sockets, and he forced himself to remain calm. The polls weren’t any more psychic than he was, and could change almost literally overnight. As for the police at the institute …

Patterson dug out his cell phone from his pocket and dialed a number, waiting for the line to connect. The digital warbling of advanced security functions assured him that Byron Stone was leaving nothing to chance in Israel.

“Yes?” came the drawling Texan voice as the line picked up.

“There has been a complication,” Patterson said briskly. “One of the bodies may have been identified, and detectives are snooping around. Ensure that the surgeon is close at hand. We may require him to void any investigations.”

The pastor could almost hear Byron Stone’s irritation down the line.

“Your amateurs should never have been employed to transport the remains. Just make goddamn sure you give us enough warning, Pastor, understood?”

Somehow, Patterson managed to rise above the Texan’s imperious tone.

“Of course.”