King City

Chapter twenty-five

The cots were out and Mission Possible had a full house, a captive audience for Friar Ted, who sat on a folding chair reading aloud from the Bible. No one appeared to be listening. They were talking among themselves and, in some cases, to themselves, but Ted didn’t seem to mind. The preacher closed the book when he saw Wade and Charlotte approaching.

“Your audience isn’t paying much attention,” Wade said.

“But I’m sure they hear me,” Ted said, rising to meet his guests. “God’s word has a way of sinking in, even for those who think they are deaf to it. I’m living proof of that.”

“I admire you for trying,” Charlotte said.

“It can’t do any harm,” Ted said. “But I’m afraid I haven’t had any luck with those photos.”

“That’s OK,” Wade said. “That’s not why I’m here. I ran into a guy today who had the Twenty?third Psalm tattooed on his arm and I thought of you.”

“ Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me,” Ted recited from memory.

“ Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies,” Wade continued. “ Thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

Ted smiled. “I’m pleased that you know it so well, and I’m sure that particular passage gives you great comfort while you’re doing your job, especially here. But I don’t see what made you think of me.”

“Well, you’ve been providing meals, shelter, and comfort to street people here for two years,” Wade said, “trying to show them that accepting God is the only way to be truly safe and content.”

“I wish more people heard his word as clearly as you have,” Ted said.

“I know you do,” Wade said. “And it must be so frustrating to you when they don’t.”

“I can’t open their hearts and minds to God. They have to do that for themselves.”

“The psalm also made me think of the murders of those women that began two years ago,” Wade said. “The victims were all shot with the same gun and covered with a blanket or a piece of cardboard.”

“One small act of decency,” Ted said.

“Or shame,” Charlotte said.

“But here’s the odd thing,” Wade said. “They all had traces of olive oil on their heads. The kind of oil you use when giving last rites.”

“Not me,” Ted said. “I preach God’s word, but I’m not a priest.”

“But you anointed them anyway,” Wade said, taking a step toward Ted, invading his personal space, “because there wouldn’t have been much point in killing them without making that last effort at their salvation.”

Charlotte turned and looked at Wade in astonishment.

Ted’s jaw tightened, as if he’d just been given a Botox injection in his cheeks, and he held the Bible to his chest.

“You’re accusing me of the worst imaginable sin,” Ted said.

“Yes, I am,” Wade said, and he’d been dreading it since he woke up that afternoon. “If you want to be forgiven for it, you’ll confess.”

“You aren’t a priest either,” Ted said.

Wade tried to stare him into doing the right thing, but Ted held his gaze.

Charlotte stepped up beside Wade and pointed to the men on the cots. “Everyone ignored you when you read from the Bible. Do you know why, Ted?”

“Because they are faithless and craven,” he said.

“Because you can’t save them, or anyone else, when you’ve deprived yourself of God’s grace,” Charlotte said. “You’re carrying a horrible sin. They can sense it. That’s why they don’t hear you; that’s why they don’t believe. Anything you do here is meaningless and ineffective without his forgiveness. You know it’s true.”

Ted’s shoulders sagged and he lowered his head in shame.

“Where’s the gun, Ted?” Wade asked softly.

Ted swallowed hard. “In my room in the back, under the mattress.”

Wade nodded to Charlotte, who went off to get the gun. He took out his handcuffs.

“You’re under arrest, Ted,” Wade said. “Put the Bible down and your hands behind your back.”

Ted set the Bible down on the chair. As Wade handcuffed him and read him his rights, Ted could see that he finally had the full attention of everyone in the room.

“She was right,” Ted said.

“Excuse me?” Wade said.

“May I minister to them for a few minutes?”

Wade saw everyone looking at them. “About what? The wages of sin?”

“I was thinking the blessed sanctity of forgiveness,” Ted said.

“Works for me,” Wade said and took a seat.

Wade let Ted preach for thirty minutes, his hands cuffed behind his back, to a rapt audience before taking him away.

During that time, Charlotte found the gun, as well as a vial of holy oil, in Ted’s room. But before collecting those two items and putting them in evidence bags, she took detailed photographs of the room and made an inventory of everything that was in it. She also searched for anything else that might tie Ted to the crime scenes.

They brought Ted back the station and in through the back door without any of the fanfare or notice that Gayle Burdett received when she was arrested. But Wade was certain that news of the arrest would spread quickly through Darwin Gardens and that, by morning, everyone there would know about it.

Wade locked Ted in the cell, and then he and Charlotte sat down to write up their reports, which they did mostly in silence. After an hour or so, Charlotte gave Wade a copy of her paperwork and stood behind him, waiting for his reaction.

“That was quite a speech you gave to Friar Ted,” he said.

“I knew all those years of Sunday school would come in handy someday.”

“I’m not sure he would have broken without the push you gave him.”

“He was already broken,” she said. “He just had to be reminded, that’s all.”

They stayed at the station the rest of the night. Wade took a can of paint outside and covered over the obscene graffiti on the plywood, although he knew it was a futile effort. He decided that he’d get a window company down to replace the glass before the end of the week, even if he had to do it by force.

While he was glad to have solved the killings, he wasn’t happy about the likely consequences. Mission Possible, without a passionate and devoted leader like Friar Ted, would probably close, putting a lot of homeless, hungry, and desperate people back on the streets.

And it would make it much more difficult for the next person who opened a shelter to establish credibility, much less trust, in the neighborhood.

The arrest of Friar Ted would just reinforce the rampant cynicism and distrust of institutions and authority that already existed in Darwin Gardens, especially toward anybody who came there professing a desire to do some good.

Including Wade.

At daybreak, he sent Charlotte downtown to book Ted into jail, and then he ambled over to the Pancake Galaxy when it opened to have some breakfast and a chance to flirt with Mandy.

She had a stack of hotcakes and a slice of pie waiting for him at the counter when he came in. Pete was at the register, puffing on a cigarette, his oxygen tank a few feet away.

“If I keep eating like this every day,” Wade said, “I’ll be the fattest cop in the department.”

“Live a little,” Mandy said. “You caught two murderers in twenty?four hours. That’s some fancy police work, Columbo.”

He took a seat at the counter. “I have my moments.”

Mandy leaned close to him. “And not just in bed either.”

“Thanks for getting the word out for me that I was bringing in Glory’s killer.”

“I didn’t,” Mandy said and gestured to her father. “There’s your publicist.”

Wade glanced at Pete, who was holding his cigarette and coughing. Each stabbing cough was deep, hard, and cutting.

“I owe you one,” Wade said when Pete’s coughing subsided for a moment.

“You sure like to be noticed,” Pete said.

“I just want people here to know that I’m working for them.”

“You’re assuming they give a damn.”

“You’re right,” Wade said.

“Then you’re not half as smart as I thought you were,” he said, taking another puff on his cigarette and sparking a coughing jag even worse than the one before.

Wade looked at Mandy and saw the pain on her face. It was as if she felt each cough herself.

The bell above the door jangled and Charlotte came in, carrying a manila envelope. She seemed troubled as she took the stool beside Wade.

“Did everything go OK at central booking with Ted?”

“Yes,” she said.

“Did you make sure that all the paperwork reflected where the arrest was made and which team of rookie police officers closed the case?”

“Absolutely.”

“So why are you looking so glum?”

She sighed. “When I was in the academy, they told us the story about those two officers who pursued a stolen car down here and drove right into an ambush.”

Pete snubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray. “They took more bullets than Bonnie and Clyde.”

“Our instructors ran us through a re?creation of that situation as a training exercise at the academy,” she said.

“What did you learn?” Mandy asked.

“To stay the hell out of Darwin Gardens.”

“I guess you flunked,” Pete said.

“Things aren’t going to change for you overnight,” Wade said. “It’s going to take a lot more than one case, and certainly not this one, to impress someone in headquarters enough to transfer you out of here.”

“That’s not it,” she said sharply. “Give me a little credit.”

“OK, sorry,” he said. “So what is it?”

Charlotte slid the envelope over to him. “While I was downtown, I got the ballistics report on those guns you had me take down to the lab on my first day.”

Wade opened the envelope and began to read the report, but he need not have bothered, because Charlotte already had.

“Four of the guns were used in that ambush,” she said. “One of them was chrome plated. They ran the prints and came up with some names.”

“Timo was one of ’em,” Wade said.

“Timo Proudfoot,” Charlotte said.

“No wonder he only goes by his first name.”

“The others are Clay Touzee, Thomas Blackwater, and Willis Parsons.”

The names meant nothing to him, of course. He needed faces.

“They’re not going to let you take them without a fight,” Mandy said.

“Seems likely,” Wade said.

He finished his pancakes and moved on to the pie. As possible last meals go, Wade couldn’t have asked for a better one.