CHAPTER SEVEN

 

“It’s a well-documented phenomenon,” Jerry said. “Sometimes people just catch on fire. I read it in a book. Could you pass the waffles?”

Breakfast coffee scalded its way down Loren’s throat, forcing open his eyes through sheer pain. He hadn’t slept well. Images of John Doe’s body still sprawled through his mind, Randal Dudenhof in an accordion of sharp-edged metal, impaled by the steering column, one or the other or both gasping for breath on the white tile floor.

“There was this one guy—” Jerry was enthusiastic. “He caught fire in his car in the middle of traffic. He burned up completely before they got to him. All that was left was his feet.”

“Yuck,” said Kelly.

“Most people who burn up are fat old alcoholics, but this guy was young.”

Loren looked up from his coffee cup. “Sounds like he was freebasing cocaine,” he said, “and the torch got away from him.”

“This was before cocaine. I mean, before they started doing that kind of thing with it.”

Loren considered the thought of a pair of smoldering feet found in an automobile. The insurance company would call it an act of God, and perhaps they were right. People, he thought, shouldn’t be afraid to call something a miracle when there was no other explanation.

This specific instance, however, did not convince him. Miracles ought not to be this frivolous. “Where do you find this stuff?” he said.

“Books.”

“There are books and there are books,” Loren said. “People lie in those kinds of books. Sometimes people just tell good stories.”

Jerry shrugged. “Maybe. But it could be relevant.”

“To what, for God’s sake?”

“There’s a fire danger now, right? There are always these fires up in the national forest. And range fires around town. Suppose it isn’t just humans who spontaneously combust. Suppose all those fires are caused by animals just blowing up.”

“Exploding gophers.” Kelly rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Jer.”

“Jerry,” said Loren, “the cause of those fires is always investigated. And nobody’s found an exploding animal yet.”

“Have they looked?”

“Someone would have noticed by now.”

“Mom.” Katrina looked at her plate. “This toast has butter on it. I wanted dry toast.”

Loren looked at her. “You’re not fat,” he said.

“Yes, I am.”

“You’re not.”

Skinny Kelly smirked. “Yes, she is.”

Loren poured himself more coffee. Katrina had inherited her mother’s sturdy bone structure— no diet could change that— but Katrina hadn’t accepted it. She was on some manner of fast most of the time and worked out continually, a nonstop combination of track, aerobics, and the high school drill team. At least, Loren thought, the weight obsession had made his daughter into an athlete.

Katrina went into the kitchen to make herself more toast. Loren stared at his plate and swallowed coffee.

He remembered Randal with the steering column through his chest, blood bubbling out of his mouth. Back then the department didn’t have the equipment to cut him out of the car, the heavy cutters they called the jaws of life.

A few weeks after the accident Loren had started a fund for the city’s first pair of cutters. He hadn’t wanted to see anything like Randal’s death again. Loren was just a patrolman then and he didn’t have much money, but he would have paid for them out of his own pocket if he’d had to. Instead he’d gone to Luis Figueracion and pointed out how with a few thousand dollars he could preserve the lives of any number of voters. Luis had seen the point, and the cutters he’d bought were still in operation.

“Jer,” said Kelly, “I wouldn’t talk too much about those exploding gophers. What if terrorists find out that they can use fat alcoholic gophers as weapons?”

Jerry grinned. “Gopher grenades,” he said.

“Gopher cocktails.”

Jerry’s eyes widened in imitation awe. “The G-bomb,” he said, his voice breathless. Kelly burst out in giggles.

Loren looked down at his plate and realized he’d left his waffle untouched. He took a bite, chewed slowly, then turned toward the kitchen, where Debra was making more waffles. Kelly was still fighting her fit of giggles.

“The waffles are wonderful!” he shouted.

“Thank you!”

“Heard you got a body,” said Jerry.

“Did . . . it . . .blow up?” Kelly asked, her words popping out from around bursts of giggles.

Loren put down his fork. “Not at table,” he said. “No politics, no police business.”

“Sorry,” said Jerry. “Forgot.”

“Who’d you hear it from?”

“Frank Sanchez took me west last night.”

“And what did he say?”

Jerry shrugged. “Not much.” He looked at Loren. “I thought you didn’t want to talk about it.”

Debra returned from the kitchen with a new plate of waffles. “No police business,” she said.

“Absolutely,” said Jerry.

The Roberts family was not present this morning, but there was another specter haunting the church steps.

“Loren,” said Mack Bonniwell, “I need to talk to you.”

Bonniwell stood on the steps of the church, gazing angrily at Loren from behind black-rimmed spectacles. His expression was grim.

“Let’s make it quick,” Loren said. He gestured for his family to continue on into the church. “Get a pew,” he said. “We’re late.”

“When you called the other night, you said you’d had to arrest my kid,” Bonniwell said. “You didn’t say you’d beat the pulp out of him.”

“I hit him twice,” Loren said. “That’s not beating the pulp out of anybody.”

“You kicked a seventeen-year-old kid in the crotch,” Bonniwell said, “and you yanked his ears half off and kneed him in the face and broke his nose. That’s pretty goddamned brutal if you ask me.”

Loren looked into the church. “The service is about to start.”

“I don’t give a shit, Hawn,” Bonniwell said.

Loren turned to him. He didn’t want to have anything to do with this. “A.J. had a gun,” he said.

“My kid didn’t.”

“I couldn’t see whether your kid did or not. I had to take him out.”

“You’re a bully, Loren Hawn!” Bonniwell stood very close. Loren flinched from the spittle that landed on his face. “You always were a bully, even back in school! I remember how you used to push other kids around! Sneak around, find out their secrets, then confront them when they were at a disadvantage!”

Heat flickered over Loren’s skin. “Are you finished?” he said. He looked left and right to see if latecomers were in view. The church choir began to sing.

“That badge doesn’t allow you to knock my family around!” Bonniwell screamed. “It doesn’t allow—”

There didn’t seem to be anyone looking. Loren slapped Bonniwell hard in the face. Bonniwell fell silent, eyes wide in stunned surprise. If the guy made a move, Loren intended to drive an elbow into his face and then sweep his feet. Dump him on the church steps and secure him.

No move was made.

“Shut your dentures, Mack,” Loren said, trying to keep his voice low, “and listen very carefully. If your kid had a gun, and if I’d given him a chance to use it, your kid would be facing death row right now, because if he killed an officer he’d be tried as an adult, okay? Now, if I were you—”

“You’re not me, thank God—” Bonniwell seemed to have found his tongue again.

“If I were you,” patiently, “I’d just shut my mouth and pay the fine and tell my kid not to hang with trash, okay?”

“I’m going to complain,” Bonniwell said. “You can’t get away with this.”

“There’s a procedure for complaint, okay,” Loren said. “You can follow it if you want. But let me point out that Judge Denver won’t want this business reopened since he’s already given a sentence, and he might just revoke your kid’s probation and make him do time, and—”

“Are you threatening my son?” Bonniwell’s voice was raised again.

“I’m telling you what’ll happen. Nothing more.”

“Hitting me on the church steps! Threatening my kid! I’m not going to forget this, Hawn.”

“I hope you don’t. Because—”

“I’m not interested in what you’ve got to say, you goddamned bully.”

Loren looked him in the eye. “Walk away from it, Mack.”

Mack stared at him for a long time, fists clenched, within a centimeter of violence, and then he turned and walked into the church.

Loren took a few deep breaths as he turned angry little circles on the porch, then headed into the big church and sat down with his family.

Last time he’d ever do an old friend a favor, he thought. Next time he’d just see the kid was tossed in jail and forgotten.

He contemplated, in some detail, breaking several of Bonniwell’s bones. The details were graphic and very pleasant.

It totally escaped him now why he’d been so reasonable during the confrontation.

“I had a sermon already written out!” Pastor Rickey proclaimed. He pronounced the last word owt.” And then I saw last night’s news on the TV and threw the whole darn thing away!” Dahrn.

“You’re grinding your teeth,” Debra said.

Loren glanced up in surprise. He’d forgotten where he was.

“That sermon was a good one, too!” Rickey said. “Maybe I’ll impart it next year.”

There were chuckles from his audience. Loren wondered blindly what the pastor was talking about.

“Because on the news last night was a perfect example of why gluttony is considered a Deadly Sin, as opposed to some less significant kind.”

The pastor lowered his voice, becoming intimate. “I only know what I saw on the news,“ he said, “and since this is a legal matter I want to give you a caution here. I only know what I saw. I don’t know that the people charged are guilty, and since some of you may serve as jurors someday, I want to remind you that you don’t know, either.”

Uh-huh, Loren thought. This was getting interesting.

“But if the news reports are correct,” Rickey said, “then what this community has experienced is a cascade of sin, one leading to another.

“The first was gluttony.” Raising a finger. “Not gluttony in its ordinary sense, but gluttony in the sense of a craving for drugs. Drugs are not simply bad for you— drugs are sinful! I want to make that clear!”

Rickey banged a fist on his pulpit. Loren watched with increasing interest. This guy might make a preacher yet.

“Drugs are sinful because they make you turn away from God! Just as excess pride makes you turn away from the Lord, so drugs make you care abowt nothing but yourself and your own craving! God’s mercy is the only answer— there are no answers in chemicals!

“So that was the first sin— gluttony for drugs. And because of their gluttony— that Deadly Sin— the people who use drugs don’t much care where the drugs come from. And because they don’t care, they encourage their suppliers not to care much, either.”

Rickey leaned back on his stool and took a long breath. “So the gluttony for drugs led to a demand for drugs that led to a robbery in order to get the cash to buy drugs! Now, about how many sins have we got so far?” Rickey held up a fist and stuck out a finger. “Theft— that’s against the Commandments!” A second finger. “Pride, because they thought they could get away with it. Covetousness of money and drugs— that’s another Deadly Sin.” Fingers kept rising till he was working on his second hand. “Envy of those who had money— Deadly Sin again! And anger, a Deadly Sin, because they had to be angry to do their part in the robbery and point guns at people in the first place and steal all their dollars.” Dahlers. “All because of gluttony, which doesn’t seem like much of a sin until you think about it.”

After the service, Loren walked down the aisle feeling as if he were on fire. He had broken this web of crime and evil, ended the cascade of sin, crushed the ringleader with the Lord’s name on his lips. He shook Pastor Rickey’s hand.

“That was the best sermon I’ve ever heard you give,” he said.

Rickey smiled. “Thank you. People always seem to pay more attention when you talk about current events.”

“You tied the current events to God.”

“I heard you got a body.” Rickey peered at Loren through rimless spectacles. “Any luck at finding out who did it?”

Loren felt the fire inside him leap higher. Was the Almighty looking at him through those spectacles? “We’re in the middle of things right now,” he said. “But I’ll be working on it today.”

“Good luck,” said Rickey.

Sword and arm of the Lord, Loren thought.

Time to get to work.