Michael Lister - Blood of the Lamb

“I don’t,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t. I’ve pretty much just been working her case. And she helps me with that. It’s like she’s still present. I don’t know… I feel her guiding me. I like being in here. I think soon the violence will fade and just her precious spirit will remain.”

He nodded without saying anything. There was nothing in his body language or facial expression to suggest it, but I got the sense that I had made him uncomfortable.

His mustache had thickened and he rubbed at it absently. When he turned to the side the sunlight outlined his profile, illuminating several nose hairs which had grown so long they blended with his mustache.

“That was good work with Malcolm and Muhammin the other night,” he said. “But are you sure they didn’t kill Nicole?”

“As sure as you can be about such things,” I said.

“You’re probably right. Guess what we found inside a small hole in Paul Register’s mattress?”

“Nicole’s crayons?” I asked.

His mouth dropped open. “Just how the hell did you know that?”

“I didn’t until just now,” I said. “You told me to guess.”

He shook his head and smiled appreciatively.

“Who found them?” I asked.

“Officer Coel,” he said.

I nodded. “When?”

“Yesterday,” he said. “The hole was tiny. I don’t see how he ever found them.”

“Did you ask him what made him look there in the first place?”

“Yeah,” he said. “At first he said it was just part of a routine search of the cell. They toss them every two weeks or so, but then when I pressed him on it, he said he got an anonymous tip.”

“He say from who?”

“Never would,” he said, shaking his head. “Said he’d lose his informants if he gave them up, but that the person was credible.”

I thought about it.

“You wanna talk to him?”

“Who?”

“Either one.”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“Both of them,” I said. “Please just help make sure all our suspects are here for the memorial service.”

“Word on the compound is Nicole’s killer’ll be arrested today,” he said.

I shook my head. “That’s not good.”

“Is it true?” he asked.

“You’d have to ask Daniels.”

“You think he knows who did it?”

I shrugged.

“If he had any sense, he’d ask for your help,” he said. “I-” he started, then paused for a moment before awkwardly beginning again. “I–I’ve got a lot of respect for you-as a man of God, of course, but as a… I don’t know… cop, too. You’re the best I’ve worked with. I can’t believe you’re not up in Atlanta working high profile cases.”

“Pete, in Atlanta I was a small town cop,” I said. “I wasn’t APD. I was a cop for the little tourist town of Stone Mountain. I did it while I was in seminary. I had worked for Dad down here and it was an easy job to get. It just happened to be at a time when a high profile case was going on.”

“You’re the one who stopped him-the Stone Cold Killer. You’ll always be the one who stopped him.”

We were silent a moment and he shifted in his chair and recrossed his legs. His movements were hesitant and awkward, his eyes seeming to search for criticism or ridicule. I felt sorry for him and regretted not having done more to encourage and edify him.

“And always the one who let the Atlanta Child Murderer get away,” I said.

His eyes widened in surprise, his eyebrows popping up into question marks. “You worked the Williams’ case,” he said, adding quickly, “and let him get away?”

“No,” I said. “He’d been in prison a good while when I went up there. But there was another one-some say a second one. I say he was working at the time of Williams and hid his victims like trees in Williams’ forest. The point is, I not only let him get away, I let him kill a little boy I should’ve been protecting. There are no experts in murder investigations. Not really. And if there are, I am certainly not one of them.”

“Well, I think you are,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I got that information you asked me to,” he said, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket. “Three inmates have sent Bobby Earl Freeing the Captives Ministries very large contributions since you’ve been back from New Orleans.”

“Any of our suspects?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Most of them don’t send or receive much mail. Porter hasn’t gotten a single letter the entire time he’s been inside. Register is the only one who sends and receives a lot, but none of it to or from Bobby Earl.”

“The three who sent contributions mailed them to the post office box, right?”

He nodded. “How’d you know they would?” he asked. “And before Bobby Earl came, not afterward.”

“Because,” I said, “the checks aren’t to support a ministry, but a habit.”

“Huh?” he asked, a look of confusion on his face.

“The inmates are buying drugs,” I said. “They prepay for drugs that are brought in from the outside.”

Eyes wide, he sat there for a moment, then said, “What do you need me to do?”

“Arrest Tim Whitfield,” I said, “and see if you can get him to give up his supplier.”

“‘Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah and sacrifice him there as a burnt offering to the Lord,’” I read from Genesis to begin my homily for Nicole Caldwell’s memorial service.

She had already been eulogized. Her life had already been celebrated. Now it was my job to deliver a message that spoke to the heart of the matter. To give reassurance and hope to her loved ones. And I would try. But I had no easy answers. No quick fixes for the ancient problem of evil and the unwelcome guest of grief.

I looked up from the Bible on the pulpit to the congregation before me. The Caldwells, dressed in black, were on the front pew, DeAndré beside Bunny. Behind them, in a sea of blue, were many of the inmates who had attended the service the night Nicole was murdered. Across the aisle from the Caldwells, Theo Malcolm sat stiffly beside Edward Stone, who sat even more stiffly. Next to him, Pete Fortner and Tom Daniels looked uncomfortable and out of place.

“These words are among the most shocking in all of sacred literature,” I continued. “They resound throughout history as an echo of madness by a God who could only attract the deranged, the disturbed, and the fanatical. A God who, after making Abraham wait for twenty-five years to receive his promised son, the boy whose very name means laughter, because of how hard his decrepit old parents had laughed when they received the promise, demands that Abraham give him back. Not just surrender him, but sacrifice him with his own hands.”

Several inmates in the congregation winced at my words, and gave me looks like they wondered where I could possibly be going with this.

My response to them, that which Frederick Buechner had convinced me should be the foundation for every sermon-most of all this one-came from Shakespeare: “‘The weight of this sad time we must obey,’” I said. “‘Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.’”

If I was right about who had killed Nicole, there could be no better source for a quotation than King Lear , but if my audience perceived the message within the message, they didn’t give any indication.

“I am here to tell the truth,” I added. “No matter how tragic it might be.”

The only response I got was a sea of blank stares.

“From the very beginning, Nicole has been compared to Isaac; Bobby Earl, her father, to Abraham.”

Bobby Earl nodded earnestly as Bunny looked up at him admiringly.