To his left were the historic fort, the trenches, ammunition bunkers, cannons, and flagpole. He stayed to the field and arrived at a gravel driveway that led up to the parking lot between the Methodist church and a four-square colonial with a wraparound porch, which was also church property and unlit behind its windows. Lucas often cut through the lot and descended the steep concrete steps that dropped down to Georgia Avenue. He passed a bucket truck and construction materials and went up a rise and came to the lot, lit faintly by a lamp hung on the side of the stone church.
In the lot stood a man.
Lucas stopped fifty feet shy of the man and studied him. His face seemed flat and his eyes were set wide. His skin was devoid of color in spots. His hair was lank. He wore jeans and a T-shirt rolled up at the sleeves to show thickly veined biceps. He was a small man, but he was strong and wired tight.
Lucas walked toward him.
The lot, empty of cars, was so greatly elevated that it was not visible from the heavily trafficked Georgia Avenue. Behind them was the darkness of the field. The man must have spied Lucas walking into the park and correctly surmised that there was but one way to the Avenue from there. He had left his vehicle down on Georgia, taken the steps up, and waited for him. He did not look like he had come to talk.
“What is this?” said Lucas, approaching the man.
The man said nothing, and as Lucas neared him he reached his left hand into his pocket and produced a knife. With a jerk of his wrist, a six-inch serrated blade sprang from its bone hilt. He held it loosely and correctly, palm up.
Now Lucas was just a couple of yards away from the man. They stood in the center of the lot. It was like a basketball court where they had come to jump for possession. Or the center circle of a wrestling mat.
“You know your Bible?” said the man.
Lucas did not answer. He stayed focused on the man’s seemingly lidless eyes.
“John, Eleven-Ten. ‘But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.’ ”
“Not this man,” said Lucas.
They moved at the same time. The man swung the knife, and Lucas stepped out of its arc and back. The man swung again. His reach was not sufficient, and Lucas knew he would have to come in. The man flipped the knife, switching it to a down-grip, and brought it across from his right shoulder as if he were swinging a bat. He caught only air. He brought the blade back from the other direction and swung with a grunt, and it took him too far. Lucas stepped to the side, then came in quickly, grabbed the man’s wrist, and struck a hammer blow to the knife arm’s elbow. The man’s hand opened like a stunned flower, sending the knife skittering across the asphalt. Lucas pushed him away.
The man looked at the knife, ten feet from his reach. He thought about it, and Lucas said, “You had your chance.”
The man charged him. He drove his head into Lucas’s abdomen and reached for the back of Lucas’s thighs, and Lucas sprawled out in defense of the takedown. He grabbed the man’s hair with his left hand, sprang forward, and with his right shot an uppercut into his jaw. The punch stood the man up and knocked him out of Lucas’s grasp. He came in once more and threw a flurry of face and head punches that stunned Lucas and forced him to step back. He locked his eyes on the man. Lucas touched his thumbs, one after the other, to his nose. Now he knew where his hands were.
They circled each other in a slight crouch. In the man’s eyes Lucas saw that he was about to move. The man feinted with his right fist and threw a wild roundhouse left that overshot the mark. Lucas ducked and came in, sliding one of his arms under the man’s punching arm, forcing that arm up firmly, anchoring it with his hand on the back of the man’s neck. Lucas slipped behind him and hooked his free arm around the man’s neck and grabbed his own wrist and pulled tight. He had him in an air choke now.
He kicked the man’s right heel out from under him and fell back, bringing the man down with him; Lucas hit the asphalt with the man on top of his chest. He scissored his legs around the man’s waist and locked him up. Lucas violently tightened his grip on the man’s neck and arched his back as he squeezed with his legs, squeezed the life out of the man who was writhing now in panic and pain and no breath. The man’s feet kicked. He made a high-pitched, childlike sound. There was no mercy in Lucas and he squeezed with all he had. Something gave beneath the crook of his arm. He felt the snap of a bone. Lucas pushed the body off of him. He rolled away and stood.
He waited for his breath to even out. He looked down at the corpse. Urine staining the man’s jeans, his eyes half open, saliva threading down from the corner of his open mouth, hands frozen and clawed. A broken string of beads and a crucifix lying crookedly on his chest. His face mannequined in the pale yellow light.
Lucas felt nothing.
He reached into the man’s back pocket and found his wallet and opened it. He saw the driver’s license that identified Nance, studied it carefully, and left it in its slot. He removed all the cash and credit cards and shoved them into the pocket of his jeans. He wiped the wallet off with his shirttail. He dropped the wallet on Nance’s torso.
Lucas picked up the knife and pocketed it. He walked toward home and did not look back. He threw the credit cards and cash down various storm drains on side streets, and behind the Kingsbury School on 14th he broke the knife blade off on an alley floor and threw it in a stand of weed trees, then tossed the hilt into another drain.
Lucas entered his apartment, took a shower, got into bed, and fell to sleep. He had no dreams.
SEVENTEEN
The body of Earl Lee Nance was found around sunup by an employee of the church arriving in advance of Sunday service. The Fourth District station sat one block south of the church, so uniformed officers quickly secured the scene. A homicide detective and mobile crime technicians arrived shortly thereafter. Parishioners who showed up later, unaware of the incident, were told that they could not park their cars in the lot, so they walked up the gravel road to the church on foot and, when given the reason for the police presence, tried to shield their children’s eyes from the sight of the victim. But, being curious about death, as the very young often are, many children managed to get a look at the corpse, its head unnaturally angled, its hands clawed in the throes of death. Some of them did not think of it after that day. For a few unfortunate others, this twisted sight would visit their dreams for years to come.
In the morning Lucas went outside and picked up the two newspapers left on the front lawn of the house. He dropped one on Miss Lee’s doorstep and took the other up to his apartment. Over coffee he read the Metro section of the Washington Post, guessing correctly that the event would not have made the morning edition. He went to his laptop and brought up the Crime Scene page of the Post ’s website. There was a small item carrying the byline of veteran reporter Ruben Castaneda that told of the discovery of a body in the lot of Emory Methodist that was being treated as a homicide. No further details were available.
Lucas took a hot shower; despite the shape he was in, he had woken up sore. Afterward, he had a good look at himself in the bathroom mirror. The crook of his right arm was reddish and irritated. His face was bruised around his eye and temple where Nance had landed a particularly vicious blow. He expected to see his mother that day and would have to come up with a lie.
He dressed in a blue suit and drove across town to his church, St. Sophia, the Greek Orthodox cathedral at 36th and Massachusetts. He went through the narthex, greeting one of the board members who manned the inner doors, and found a spot in a pew on the left side of the nave, far in the back, beside a white-haired woman who had once been his Sunday school teacher. He spotted a couple of the guys with whom he’d played GOYA basketball, standing with their wives. He saw their parents and a few of their grandparents. He could see his mother, Eleni, standing beside Leo, center section, in one of the rows close to the altar. Leo brought her here nearly every Sunday. The good son, thought Lucas, without any feelings of sarcasm or rancor.