The Last Good Guy

21

We sat in her small living room, the knockoff Tiffany lamp beside the sofa casting varied light through its stained-glass shade. Penelope took the plaid couch with the lamp next to it and I got a director’s chair.

She stared at me, lamplight and shadow on her face. “How long have you been following me?”

I explained my mission in San Clemente, Yash, cruising the streets — my last known address for Daley. My surprise at seeing Penelope there, interviewing the shopkeepers on Del Mar. My decision not to interfere. Following her first to the Cathedral by the Sea, then home.

“You think it’s okay, spying on your employer?”

“I had your back. You know Atlas, don’t you?”

She looked at me sharply, then away, sending her curls back with the shake of her head. “I already told you that. I met him in late August. When I was checking out his church. On behalf of Daley.”

“No,” I said. “You told me you met a youth minister who ‘came at’ Daley.”

“He did.”

“The youth minister is a woman.”

“Maybe my youth minister was her assistant.”

“Maybe he’s related to your ex-husband.”

“In what possible way?”

“As another character you’ve made up.”

Silence between us then. She turned to me with her knife thrower’s stare.

“Okay,” I said. “Let’s try this again. Do you know Atlas, Penelope?”

“What did you see and hear tonight?”

“Short answer? Everything.”

“Hiding in the hills with some fancy military scope?”

“Zeiss night-vision binoculars. Good ones.”

“I will not take the name of the Lord in vain. Much as I’d like to right now.”

“Let it rip, Penelope. I do it all the time.”

“Then goddamn you.”

“Say it like you mean it.”

“I mean it, all right.”

But I saw the anger angling away from her. Before it had really even gotten started. Wasn’t sure what had come in to replace it. She gave me a long, empty look.

Then sighed and stood, walked to the window. Twisted a wand and let the floodlight in.

“I met Reggie Atlas twenty years ago. I was eight. Mobile, Alabama. He was a guest preacher at the Pentecostal and he visited our Sunday school. Led a prayer and talked to us about growing up in Jesus. Twice a year, he’d come guest-preach. The rest of the time he was touring in his van. He had named the van ‘Four Wheels for Jesus’ He ministered all over the South. He was starting to draw good crowds.”

She gave me a slack look, rare from her. The door-to-door search for Daley and the run-in with Atlas had taken something out.

“We got to be really good friends,” she said. “Wrote letters, and emails, and talked on the phone. Wrote Bible essays and poetry to each other. Lots of poems. We both loved dogs and horses. Talked about everything. His family and mine. Jesus and His plans for us. He came through Mobile six years running. Always led a Sunday-school prayer for us kids. The van became a bus. Always had a nicer bus. Bigger and fancier.”

She sat back down on the couch and leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees.

“One year, he let me see his new bus. Just me. We prayed and talked and read scripture, and he gave me a beautiful red rose and asked if I’d like to drink the blood of Jesus with him. And I said yes. I would have said yes to almost anything. I was fourteen. Brave. Foolish. And Reggie was the warmest, strongest, best-looking, funniest man I knew except for Jesus and Dad. I felt wild when I was around him. He said the pills would relax me. He said that we could never experience a love like ours again. That it was a gift from God to us. That the love I felt for him was real. The blood was sweet red fruit juice with a funny taste at the end. We talked and prayed. I got dizzy. He touched my face. Baptized me from a beautiful silver bowl. Led me to his bed. I went of my own free will. Shall I keep going, Roland? I know you get to the bottom of things. But how much truth is good for you?”

“Go on.”

“I remember some details. Trying to escape him. His hands. I was numb. My fists were light as cotton and he was heavy. Very hard to move or even breathe. Pain. Fear. Wondering what Jesus thought of me. Wondering what the world outside would look like later. I slept for hours after.”

In our silence I heard a car pass down the street outside. Distant voices on the sidewalk. Penelope addressed her entwined hands.

“Later, he told me the pills were morning-after pills. A double dose. So it all could be our secret. We could love each other like this whenever we wanted. And there would be no more pain, only pleasure. Forever. Us. Amen.”

The voices from outside grew a little louder. Figures on the sidewalk, footsteps. A soft laugh. Penelope waited for them to pass by before she spoke again.

“But they failed. The pills.”

Then the consequences, raining down.

“Daley,” I said.

“My beautiful daughter.”

I hadn’t noted a strong resemblance between images of Daley Rideout and Pastor Reggie Atlas, but I hadn’t been looking for that. Maybe I’d only missed the obvious.

“Does she know?”

“Oh, no, Roland. She’s been my little sister for as long as she’s had memories. Dad and Mom and I made her world that way. At first they wanted to give her away. I wouldn’t do that. I prevailed. I had ten times their power of will. It’s been my only weapon.”

“Does Atlas know?”

“He was the only one who knows. Now you.”

It took me a while to fit these pieces together. They were huge and almost unbearably heavy. But they fit.

“Reggie has followed us since Daley was born,” said Penelope.

“Followed?”

“He, or sometimes people who work for him. They found us in Colorado, right after she was born. Found us in Salt Lake, Boise, Reno. In Eugene with Mom and Dad. Everywhere we went. Now here at the end of the continent.”

“What does he want?”

“At first, my silence. Which I was willing to give to keep him away. He knew that I could destroy his marriage and his career. A simple paternity test of Daley would ruin him.”

“Why didn’t you talk? Tell your story?”

“For Daley. For Mom and Dad. For me. He took pictures of me that night. After.”

“Did he offer you money?”

“Often. I declined. He threatened to kill me if I told. Four times he threatened to kill me, to be exact. And as Daley grew, Reggie changed. She’s my age now. The age I was.”

I let that idea sink in for a long moment. “Your age now. And?”

“He wants to make her believe in him like he made me believe. I know this.”

“How do you know this?”

“I stared into his soul as he raped me, Roland. He wants her also. He’s more evil than you understand.”

It hit me like a fist to a kidney.

“You think he’s got her.”

“That’s why I went to the Cathedral by the Sea,” she said, wiping an eye with her sleeve. “That’s why I hired you. That’s why I wander around a town I don’t know, opening doors and looking through windows. I pray every second that she’s simply run away because she’s young and spirited and capable of bad judgment. That Reggie is not behind it.”

She rose and closed the blinds and turned to me, cheeks slick in the weak light. That hard blue stare. Judgment and anger returned. Shame, too. Pupils tight and black as peep sights, aimed inward. Not at the world. Not at me.

“I hate pity, Roland. But thank you for having my back tonight. I felt that someone was watching me. I honestly didn’t think it was you.”

“You’ve never gone to the police?” I asked.

“I tried to, in Denver and Eugene,” she said. “But I couldn’t tell them the whole truth. And they couldn’t do anything with harassment and stalking accusations I couldn’t prove. I sensed intense suspicion of me. One detective was different. He informally interviewed Reggie. The detective ended up apologizing to him. Late that night, Reggie threatened to kill me if I did that again.”

“When and how did he threaten you?”

“Four times over the years. As I said. Exactly four. The first time was Denver. The most recent was Prescott.”

“Can you prove it?”

“No,” she said. “Always by phone. One time he heard me trying to record a conversation with a digital recorder. It was loud and obvious. After that, he would just listen and breathe. I knew what it meant. The four times don’t include the breathing calls.”

“Does he still call?”

“Often. He offers money.”

“What did he tell you tonight, at the cathedral?”

“That I was insane, as always, and he’d call the police on me if I trespassed there again. I thought you were listening to us with some fancy gadget.”

“I watched. I didn’t hear.”

I stood. Somehow the occasion required it. Like swearing an oath. Or paying last respects.

I was suddenly aware of how alone in her world Penelope Rideout was. A stranded creature born of a violent past, buoyed only by her own deceptions. And I felt my own aloneness, too — just a man in a small house beside a great sea, drawn by the simple need to earn a living.

“Please sit, Roland.”

She sat back down on the couch, turned off the lamp. We waited in the near dark for a good long time. I didn’t know for what. Part of me couldn’t wait to get away from this once broken girl. But part of me wanted to stay with the woman she had become. Help beat back her demons. Be there for her. I could do just that. I wanted to.

Minutes, an hour, more. A night bird in the palm with a voice like knocking wood. Another car on the street. Always another car on the street in these crowded California beach towns.

“I’ll pay extra if you stay here tonight,” she said. “I want you nearby. This couch pulls out. I’ll get you sheets and a pillow. Booze in the cabinet, ice in the fridge.”

She disappeared into the dark hall and a light went on and I heard a closet open.

I looked at the front door, the easily thrown deadbolt. Saw the glint of my truck. Saw in my mind’s eye the interior of that truck, with its familiar dash lights on and its gauges gauging and its headlights showing me the road home. Home. The Irregulars, if I wanted company. Privacy, if I wanted to be alone. The hills, if I wanted nature. All presided over by the welcome ghost of Justine. But...

I went into the kitchen, poured a long-night bourbon, and leaned against the counter with it. Fluorescent lights shivering overhead. Felt the terrible weight bearing down on the woman of this house, but couldn’t think of one useful thing to do for her or her daughter. Her daughter. Of course. Under my nose the whole time. Under everyone’s. Plain sight. You want to believe. You want to trust. You have things to do and people to deal with. So you see what you want to see. Until you don’t.

And what if she’d made it all up?

Again.

She looked in from the living room, set an armful of bedding on the couch, and turned to me.

“Thank you.”

She waved, awkwardly, as if unsure what type of wave this circumstance called for. Part “Hi” and part “See you later.” Then headed back down the hall.

I sat up late. Sipped that drink. Thought about many things past and present. How one thing leads to another, then back again. Sometimes. And other times not at all. Remembered meeting Justine Timmerman, Esq., at a holiday party in the Grand Hyatt Hotel downtown one stormy winter night. One look and a few words. The acceleration of life. Felt that acceleration again, now.

I moved the bedding to the coffee table, took the pillow, and dozed uncomfortably. Dreams vague and meaningless. Up with sunrise, rib aching. Death’s sparring partner looking back at me from the bathroom mirror.

My next move had to be Detective Darrel Walker.