Chapter 20
Dwight Baptist Church was on my route home, a brick cube dressed up by a small steeple and an iron cross.
I rang the doorbell and spoke to an elderly lady in a smart navy suit who bid me please wait outside. The Reverend D. Geoffrey Willamette’s name presided atop the letterboard. Tacked below the schedule of services was a poster for an upcoming event called Get Woke, Stay Woke: Empowering Our Youth! There would be free food, a DJ, a dance contest, a winter coat drive, a poetry slam.
There’d be a moment of silence to honor two young men, victims of gun violence. I recognized their names.
The woman returned to show me to the pastor’s office.
Rail-thin, bald, in his sixties, Willamette greeted me with an open face, an open hand, a broad pleasant baritone that offered me a seat and a cup of water.
I accepted both and watched for a shift in demeanor as I explained who I was and why I was there. Employing the soft fib I’d told Edwina Triplett: main gig with dead people, but additional duties.
“How is Sister Edwina?” he asked. “I haven’t seen her here in too long.”
“She said she comes when she can.”
Willamette chuckled. “I suppose she does. Which makes it my responsibility to seek after her.”
“She could stand a checkup at the doctor.”
“That’s good to know. I’ll arrange for it. I try to keep tabs on people, but things escape me. I used to be better at storing it all up here.” Tapping his temple. “Nowadays, unless it’s in front of my eyes... It pains me to think how much suffering might’ve been avoided, if I were a more diligent man.”
“I wouldn’t blame yourself, Reverend.”
He smiled. “Got to blame somebody. Might as well be me. As far as Julian is concerned, I haven’t laid eyes on him for a long, long time. That pains me. The boy needs a certain degree of support to function.”
“What kind of support?”
“The kind that only a community can provide.”
“His mom said you got him a job here.”
He nodded. “I’m not ashamed to admit that my motives were strictly charitable.”
“Why would you be ashamed to admit that?”
“Because in the end, charity is patronizing,” he said. “I gave him that job to keep him out of trouble. I never suspected he would be any good at it.”
“But he was.”
“More than good,” Willamette said. “He had a talent.”
“For?”
“Fixing things.”
The first kind words anyone had had to say about Julian Triplett.
Willamette tented his fingers. “Let’s agree, Deputy, at the outset, that he did a grievous wrong. Nevertheless he lives, he is a man, and he is free to make choices. So the question becomes: What will make a better world for him and everyone else? Tormenting him? Turning him into an outcast? These are the very forces that pushed him toward darkness. Whom do we serve, by serving the past? It’s my belief that every man retains within him the light of God, just as each one of us who professes virtue bears the taint of sin. Julian revealed to me his godly spirit. For me that’s reason enough to say: Praise be.”
“Did he ever express remorse for what he’d done?”
“He didn’t often voice his thoughts.”
“So that’s a no.”
“He has a unique mind. Whether he repented in his heart, I can’t say. But he never gave us any problems.”
“Did you encourage him to repent?”
“I encouraged him to concentrate on building a worthy future.”
“By fixing things,” I said.
Willamette rubbed the top of his desk. “Before I was called here, I had a prison ministry. Seven years. I looked into the faces of hundreds of men, some of whom had committed unspeakable acts. Comparable to Julian’s. Worse, if you can imagine.”
“I can.”
“We must not be afraid to call evil deeds by their true name. By the same token, we must not be so vested in our own righteousness, so afraid of appearing weak to ourselves, that we deny goodness when it rises from the ashes. Many of those men were little more than frightened boys themselves.”
“That’s what Edwina said about Julian.”
“It doesn’t excuse him, of course. What I hoped for was to get him on the right path, so that he could exceed the sum total of his history.”
I said, “What sort of things did he fix?”
“Whatever we needed. Drywall. Gutters. He installed those bookshelves.” He chinned at me. “He made that chair you’re sitting on.”
I tensed, feeling the imaginary pressure of Triplett’s hands on my back, my legs. Willamette didn’t seem to notice, and I forced myself to relax.
“I don’t want to give you the impression that I took him on as my personal carpenter,” Willamette said. “He was always paid fairly for his work. But the good it did went beyond that. It nourished him to create.”
I glanced at the bookshelves: straight and true, with tidy corners, the wood polished to a satin luster. “Where’d he learn to make furniture?”
“He picked up the basics while he was incarcerated. When I saw that he had a gift, I arranged for him to take private lessons with a gentleman I know, a friend of mine who’s a superior craftsman. Are you familiar with the Urban Foundry?”
I was: an industrial arts school in Oakland’s warehouse district, not far from the old Coroner’s building.
“My friend gave Julian permission to use their woodshop in the off hours, so he could go in and work on projects of his own.”
While I admired the reverend’s capacity to see decency in everyone, I did question the logic of granting a convicted murderer — who’d stabbed a woman to death — unsupervised access to a room full of sharp tools.
“May I please ask your friend’s name?”
Willamette looked me in the eye. “I’m sharing this information with you on the understanding that your goal is to help Julian.”
“You said it yourself, Reverend. It’s better if he’s not out there in the wind.”
A beat.
“Ellis Fletcher,” he said. “He’s retired now but I believe he comes in every now and again to teach.”
“Thank you.”
Before leaving I stepped back to have a look at the chair. Mahogany, delicate spindles at the back, sinuous legs, carved claw feet. Far more sophisticated than the shelves.
“Amazing, isn’t it,” Willamette said.
I nodded. The finish on the seat had rubbed off over the years, leaving a blond center surrounded by a dark, reddish corona that reminded me of dried blood.
“Julian had big hands,” Willamette said, touching one of the spindles. “Huge. Like those foam fingers they wave at sporting events. You’d never think a man with hands like that could produce such delicacy. It speaks to an underlying gentleness.”
I said, “Thanks for your time, Reverend.”
That evening I took a walk down Grand Avenue, got myself a bento box and a kombucha to go. I sat on my couch and started to put my feet up on the coffee table.
My phone rang with an unfamiliar number.
I set my food aside, wiped my hands on my pants. “Hello?”
A deep voice said, “This is Ken Bascombe. I heard you were looking for me.”
“Oh. Yeah. Hi. Thanks for getting back to me. Did Nate Schickman fill you in?”
“He said something to do with the Zhao murder. You’re with the Coroner?”
“That’s right. Clay Edison.”
“Tell you upfront, Clay, I’m glad that shit’s over and done with.”
“Bad one,” I said.
“The worst,” he said.
I told him about Linstad’s death; about Rennert’s.
“Rennert has a daughter who’s local,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “And?”
“Triplett’s out there, walking around. I can imagine he’s carrying some ill will.”