I stood and dashed down the final swirl of scotch. Locked the office and drove to All Saints. On the way, I sent Jeremy Cameron a text message.
I’ll be in the parking lot of your church. Need me, I’m here.
I doubted Jeremy was in physical danger.
Heck, I didn’t even know if he was telling the truth or not. But the kid felt so young, and Father Louis had intimidated even me a little.
Well. A very little. I had a gun, after all. And I did some pushups last night.
I had a mental image of a scared kid being afraid of his tyrannical and violent father. I didn’t know if that was an accurate picture of what was going on, but I assumed it would help Jeremy Cameron if he knew I was close.
I parked in the paved lot and lowered my windows. Roanoke’s downtown was breezily industrious, a self-contained and satisfied world that moved a couple miles per hour slower than bigger cities.
Louis Lindsey’s voice flooded my car. An All Saints commercial on the radio, enlightening listeners that life had meaning and he would be honored to help them navigate it at either the early or late service on Sunday. I turned the volume down and wished things were that easy in real life.
I’m so profound. Kix would be amazed.
He would also demand I work more efficiently, because I was checking Ronnie’s location on my phone. Relax kid, it’s harmless to look. (She was at her office) But then I got busy searching the photos on Nicholas McBride’s Facebook page.
Nicholas McBride, Roanoke, Virginia, clergy, worship leader and children’s director at All Saints. He was married and had a baby. The wife and baby made him look older than Jeremy Cameron. In his photos Nicholas was playing the guitar, giving his baby a bath, holding hands with his wife at the beach. Like Jeremy, Nicholas was attractive. White, trim, athletic, looked like a long-distance runner. Dressed in tight jeans and trendy tight shirts. I found a photo of him smiling with his mother.
Something inside me was disquiet. My inner eye spotting clues the rest of me was too dense to see. Or maybe I was hungry.
I walked down the street to Bread Craft and got two doughnuts and an iced latte and prayed Manny wouldn’t see me with all the carbs. Came back and resumed my digital investigation.
I found Nicholas McBride’s Instagram account and stared at the collection. Then I jumped to Jeremy Cameron’s collection, and back. I stared for thirty minutes until I identified the nagging disquiet.
“Ah hah,” I told myself. Because we all need encouragement.
I went through all of Jeremy Cameron’s Facebook timeline and searched his photo collection again. Further confirmation.
Neither guy had a photograph with his father. Multiple shots with Mom, and none with Dad. Did that matter? Maybe. Maybe not.
Mackenzie August, master of deduction.
What else did they have in common? Young guys. Fit. Fancy hair on the longer side, always in place. Handsome. But their faces each held the same type of handsome. In fact, handsome might not be the right word. These weren’t overly masculine guys. They were…pretty wasn’t the right word either. Nothing effeminate about them. Nor androgynous. But they were organized. Their outfits matched, more than most men their age. They wore good shoes and belts. Not slobs, not messy. Nice bright eyes, good lashes, big smiles. They posed well for the camera…
I snapped my fingers.
That was it. They looked like guys raised by their mother. No father around telling the mom to quit fussing with his hair, it’s good for the kid to get dirty, don’t baby the boy, he’s supposed to get banged up and scraped.
I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was short and in place…mostly. I had a little powdered sugar from the doughnut on my chin. I could use a shave. I looked down—my shirt wasn’t tucked in. My sneakers needed to be washed. Or replaced.
My mother had died years ago, eliminating her gentrifying influence. My father never offered to help me pick out clothes and he never demanded I pose for pictures. Therefore I was a bit of a mess.
Fascinating.
Manny had been raised without his father. And that guy looked perfect. How’d he do that?
I was contemplating my own short-comings when Father Louis appeared out of the church. I was close enough to see his face was red, veins bulging in his neck. He hurled a computer bag into the back of his white Audi convertible, got inside, and roared off.
I thought maybe our eyes locked for an instant. But that was my imagination.
I texted Jeremy Cameron.
If you’re still alive, I’m still outside.
He appeared a few minutes later. Scanned the parking lot and saw me. I beckoned. He came on shaky legs, opened the door, and kinda fell in.
“Good grief,” he said. “That was like being in the principal’s office. And the police station. And purgatory.”
“Father Louis lambast his staff?”
“He paced back and forth like an angry lion. He told us about someone trying to tear the church apart. Unfounded accusations meant to assassinate his character. That he and God would deal swiftly and with justice against the wicked. That we shouldn’t believe the rumors, and we should report directly to him if we hear anything. At the end, he was irate to the extent of incoherence.”
I gave him a minute to decompress. We stared out our respective windows and thought things without speaking.
A curious system, this church hierarchy. The head of the church, or rector, seemed to have an inordinate amount of power. He wasn’t hired or fired by the congregation, but by a distant Bishop. And if the rector was gregarious enough and filling the coffers, who stood in the way of absolute control?
God, I supposed. But did he involve himself in the management of such things?
I said, “How did Nicholas handle it?”
“Fine. Other than Father Louis, no one in the room spoke much.”
“Would you care to reveal the identity of the other man Father Louis has allegedly molested?”
“I promised I wouldn’t,” said Jeremy. “So I can’t.”
“You promised you wouldn’t tell the vestry who he is. And by extension, you promised you wouldn’t tell me who he is.”
“Correct.”
“I’ll find out without your help. And I will keep his secret as thoroughly as you are.”
He nodded. “I believe you. The less people who know, the better.”
“Fewer.”
“What?”
“The fewer people who know, the better. I know it’s weird because ‘people’ seems like an uncountable entity, but…you know, let’s move on. Did Father Louis hire you personally?”
“He did. In the Episcopalian church, hiring is the purview of the rector,” said Jeremy.
“Did he interview you?”
“Yes.”
“Did he ask about your father?”
He blinked. Blinked again. “Maybe. Does that matter? It was three years ago.”
“Try to remember. Certainly he asked about your family and your history. He’d be an irresponsible maniac not to.”
“I have no relationship with my father.”
“That’s the point.”
“How is that the point?”
“I’m gathering evidence. You want the vestry and me to believe this married and well-known religious leader is secretly a homosexual and a predator. Predators are careful. Predators don’t pick their victims at random. Predators often select young men who have no relationship with their father. They are malleable. Vulnerable to predation.”
The color in his face graduated down from a healthy pink to sickly pale. He stared through my dash into the distant history, recalling a job interview three years ago.
“You’re saying…that’s the reason I was chosen? He hired me with this in mind?”
“Maybe.”
“Somehow that makes it even worse. Yes. At the interview, he asked several questions about my father.”
“If he’s guilty, then it’s no coincidence,” I said, “that Nicholas doesn’t have a healthy relationship with his father either.”
“Good Lord.”
“The church staff appears curated with tempting targets for a sexual predator.”
Jeremy covered his eyes with his hands. Took a deep breath. “How do you know Nicholas doesn’t have a relationship with his father?”
“Elementary, my dear Jeremy Cameron. To be specific, it’s seventy-five percent the result of a quick and rigorous investigation, and twenty-five percent a guess. I’m right, aren’t I?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, in something of a monotone voice, “People say the two of us look alike.”
“You do, a little.”
“The receptionists at All Saints tease us. Say we dress like we’re gay.”
“Although I’d take that as a compliment, the receptionists are misguided. You two dress like you care. Like you were taught how and you listened. Don’t have to be gay to care how you look. Does Nicholas have an unhealthy or nonexistent relationship with his father?"
“I think so. He’s more reserved concerning these things than me.”
“I’m making an educated guess that Nicholas is the other victim. He is younger and still in awe of Louis and doesn’t want to lose his job,” I said. Again, twenty-five percent a guess.
I had the best guesses.
“I cannot answer that,” he said.
“I know.”
“Also, I don’t like being called a victim.”
“You’re right. Poor word choice,” I said.
“I know what you meant. And I know you don’t intend any harm. But it helps if I don’t allow myself to feel victimized. You know?”
“I don’t think of you as a victim, so I shouldn’t use the word.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“For the sake of this conversation, let’s proceed on a plank of hypothetical presumption. A presumption that Nicholas is the other man Louis attempted to molest. Or successfully molested. Why does he refuse to speak with the vestry?”
“Probably for the same reason I delayed for months. I knew I wouldn’t be believed. I never felt so alone as when confiding in Hugh Pratt and Robert Wallace. There’s a strong chance my reputation will be ruined and I won’t find another job in a church. Even if I’m proven correct, I’ll still bear a stigma.”
“America hates snitches,” I said. “Might as well have that in our pledge of allegiance.”
“Even the Christian community hates them. That’s something I’m learning. Parishioners pledge allegiance to their pastor or priest; he becomes their idol and suddenly your church is fractured. Most of All Saints will think I’m being unfaithful to Father Louis.”
“That’s a universal problem mature churches should be immune from. But. Trouble with churches is, they’re constituted by people. Fallen and broken people feel personally implicated and betrayed by snitches, which is absurd,” I said.
He was crying. Looking away from me.
I said, “But you can’t think of it that way. You can’t look through that broken lens. Paul Revere wasn’t a snitch. Neither was Martin Luther King, Jr. They were men telling the truth about a danger.”
“Doesn’t matter how I look at it. I still carry the burden.”
I popped open my glove compartment near his knees and withdrew a box of travel tissues. Dropped them in his lap.
“It’s a heavy burden, too,” I said. “Not able to be carried by many men. Which is why Nicholas doesn’t want to come forward. Yet. Hypothetically.”
He wiped his eyes. Blew his nose. Gave a sad smile.
“These things never work out well for the testifying victim, do they. No, I don’t want to say victim. I mean…I don’t know what I mean.”
“It can’t be made fair. Not really. But you’re still going through with it,” I said.
“I am.”
“Why?”
“Because I remain a believer. I still believe in the holiness of God. The goodness of the church. I refuse to let one man ruin it for me. We live in a fallen world, as you said. We’re meant to walk with our creator but we wallow in squalor and lesser realities, distanced from God. The church is his primary tool on this planet to get us out of our mire. It’s a broken and leaky ship but it’s the only one headed in the right direction. You know, most of the time. If a wicked man is at the wheel, he has to be removed. Even if it costs me everything.”
“Holy smokes, Jeremy.”
He chuckled. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, you can see. And my convictions are only getting stronger.”
“If I was an inch more emotional, I’d be choked up.”
“You need the tissues?” he asked.
“No. But I might come listen to you preach one day soon.”
“You should hear Nicholas. He’s a gifted orator.”
“What happened to your father?” I said.
“He was a drunk. Still is, I assume. He abused Mom. She left him when I was ten. He came around some, and I had to call the police on him when I was twelve.”
“That leaves a mark.”
“It does,” he said. But he sounded less sad now. “Do you believe me now? About Father Louis?”
“Getting that way.”
“Even if you correctly identified the other man Father Louis is assaulting, hypothetically, he still won’t testify to vestry or in court. So how will you prove Louis’s guilty?”
“Jeremy,” I said. “I’m not sure. Yet.”