CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
DELIA
I’m not enthusiastic and neither is Cade. We’re both thinking that Quentin is more likely to confide in a friend than a stepparent. Especially a Bible-toter. But when a quick visit to a second friend produces little more than shakes of the head, I decide to go forward. Ezekiel Frazier’s listed address in Dunning is empty when we arrive, but a neighbor, a woman hanging laundry on a backyard clothesline, tells us that Frazier’s probably at his church. The First Apocalyptic Church of Gethsemane.
“Do you know where the church is located?”
“Not sure, Captain. In Oakland Gardens is what I heard.” She takes a clothespin out of her mouth, then nods once. “What you did, saving that girl? You wanna run for Mayor, you got my vote.”
Two votes now. A couple more and it’ll be a landslide.
I call in to the House and request a search for the address of the Apocalyptic Church of Gethsemane. The search is unproductive and I’m disappointed, but not surprised. Baxter sits almost dead-center in the Midwestern Bible Belt. Men and women who feel the call regularly lease storefronts and open churches. Overwhelmingly, these churches fail, in large part because the call to service is heeded only by the reality-challenged.
“Why don’t we try Carroll Street?” Cade suggests. “I think it’s the only commercial street in Oakland Gardens.”
Carroll Street offers no surprises. The entire neighborhood was once a solid, working-class community, but many of the stores that lined both sides of the street are boarded up. A few remain: a check cashing operation advertising payday loans, a nail salon, a tiny convenience store, a barber shop with no customers. The barber’s sitting in the store’s only chair.
“Let’s stop here,” Cade suggests. “Barbers usually know everybody in the neighborhood.”
The barber looks up when the door opens. He’s in his fifties, wearing a green smock over a T-shirt. His eyes are shot with red lines and the dark patches beneath his eyes are big enough to be carpet bags. Both Cade and I have our badges clipped to our jackets, but the barber hardly reacts.
“Good morning,” I say, always polite.
“Yeah, good morning. What could I do for ya?”
“We’re looking for a man named Ezekiel Frazier, or maybe his church, the Church of Gethsemane.”
“That nut?” The barber shakes his head. “Don’t know what you want him for, but the man’s a walking insanity defense. You comment on the weather, he quotes Leviticus.”
“We only want to talk to him.”
“Yeah, I heard that one before.”
Cade jumps in. “If you’re not gonna tell us where the church is located, say so. Enough with the bullshit.”
“C’mon now. You’re my first company in two days. Leastways you could be sociable.” The barber’s smiling, apparently unintimidated. “Okay, Zeke’s so-called church, which far as I can tell has a congregation of two, Zeke and his . . . his companion? It’s right around the corner, on Whalen Street.
The sign above the storefront window is hand-painted: Apocalyptic Church of Gethsemane. The window itself is covered by a steel shutter, but the door’s open and I step inside. A handmade cross dominates the back wall, with a lectern in front. Several rows of folding chairs face the lectern, their gray paint chipped, their faux-leather seats torn. The floor’s linoleum is also torn, though spotless. In fact, the whole church appears recently washed, even the faded paint on the walls.
A man and a woman sit together in a middle row, the man bent over a spiral notebook. He stands as I approach, turning to me. His eyes are a startling blue, almost electric. They project a mix of confusion and anger that I can’t quite read. His companion stands alongside him. Probably in her sixties, she eyes Cade and me with obvious suspicion.
“I’m looking for Reverend Frazier.”
“That would be me.” Frazier rubs the side of his face. “What can I do for ya?”
“You’re Quentin Durwood’s father?”
“Stepfather. And I don’t know where he is. And don’t wanna know. And don’t care what he did or didn’t do. The boy left my concern when he abandoned his God.”
Frazier delivers the message with considerable force, but I’m pretty much unmoved. “And you, ma’am, please tell me your name?”
“She’ll do no such thing. And you have no right to bring weapons into my church. ‘He makes wars cease to the end of the earth. He breaks the bow and cuts the spear in two. He burns the chariots with fire.’ ”
Far from inspired, I want to punch him in the mouth. I can’t, of course, and I’m grateful when the woman gently nods to me, then leads us out of the church. She closes the door behind her and takes a deep breath.
“It’s gettin’ harder,” she tells Cade, apparently assuming he’s the top cop here.
Cade glances at me, notes the smile on my face, and jumps in, his tone a good deal milder than I would have predicted. “I didn’t get your name, ma’am?”
“Milly Durwood.”
“You’re Quentin’s mother?”
“His aunt. Quentin’s mom passed more’n six years ago.” She looks at me for a moment, then returns to Cade. “Before she passed, on her last day, she asked me to care for Ezekiel. Man of God aside, and I ain’t doubtin’ his piety, the man never could take care of himself. Now, with the dementia . . . if I didn’t keep watch on him, he’d be in the nut house for sure. Close call, as is. Couple nights ago, I fell asleep and he got out. Walked the streets round here preachin’ at the top of his lungs. The cops was nice enough to bring him home. This time.”
“I see, Ms. Durwood. It must be awful hard. And the way you’re keepin’ the promise you made to your sister? That’s admirable.” Cade pauses long enough for Mildred’s sudden blush to fade. “I suppose you know Quentin?”
“Course I do.”
“Do you know where he’s currently staying?”
“Heard he’s rentin’ a place in town, but I can’t say exactly where. And before you get goin’, me and Zeke ain’t laid eyes on Quentin since we left the cottage.”
“The cottage?”
“Uh-huh, in Grant Park.”
Better to be lucky than good? Or did we simply turn over the relevant rock, persistence finally rewarded? Either way, I step in at this point, mainly because Cade still doesn’t know why I’m looking for Quentin Durwood.
“Is that where you all lived? In Ulysses Grant Park?”
“That’s right, till they threw us out. Quentin couldn’t handle it, bein’ as he had no place to go at the time.”
“And his stepfather? It was okay with him?”
Mildred looks down at her feet as she gathers her thoughts. I have a feeling that her life with Zeke and his dementia is a lonely one. That she needs company, even a pair of cops looking for her nephew. “Okay, the forest out there, it only became a state park seven years ago. Fore that, you go back a hundred years, it belonged to Aaron Struther. He founded Struther and Son Lumber. Made millions and the forest was his private hunting preserve. Then like eighty years later, when the family got tired of payin’ taxes, they converted the hunting preserve into a public nature preserve. The change didn’t amount to more than lettin’ visitors hike through it. So . . .”
I cut her off right there. “And what was the Durwood family’s role in all this?”
“The Durwoods, running back three generations, were the preserve’s caretakers. Our duties weren’t much. We created and maintained the horse and hunting trails, markin’ them out and the like. And we shooed off trespassers, or called in the Sheriff when things got rough. But that was pretty much it. The horses were stabled outside the preserve and we hired locals when we needed extra hands.”
“You said something about a cottage. Did I hear that right?”
“You did. The family wasn’t paid much in wages, but they lived rent-free in a cottage Struther and Son built on the property. Living room, kitchen, and three tiny bedrooms, but sturdy enough to be home to four generations of Durwoods.”
“I assume that came to end?”
“Four years ago, when the State took charge, the Struther Nature Preserve was transformed into Ulysses S. Grant State Park. What they call ‘a village’ got built next, with its own maintenance center. That took three years, after which there wasn’t no more need for the Durwood family and they sent us an official notice that we was to vacate within sixty days.”
There’s nothing left to be said, but I allow her to go on for a few moments. Quentin, she tells me, wanted to hire a lawyer. He was convinced the right to live in the cottage was hereditary. That was nonsense, but it wasn’t the reason they left. Zeke, as it turns out, is big on predestination. God’s will prevails in God’s creation. The Durwoods, meaning Quentin and his aunt, were out of the picture by then. Any right to live in the cottage had passed to Zeke when his wife died and Zeke decided that God wanted them to vacate. The State was prepared to evict in any event.