Vanessa lay motionless beside us. Brum, brum. Brum, brum… Lien-hua took a seat in the chair opposite me. “You were telling me about the pastor.” She seemed to have slipped into counseling mode. Maybe she was analyzing me, profiling me. But at that moment I didn’t really care.
I sighed. “I don’t think he really realized how desperate Christie’s condition was because more often than not he ended up arguing with me. ‘Design is evidence of a designer,’ he told me one day, and then recited some of the typical Intelligent Design arguments-irreducible complexity, things like that.”
“And?”
“That was the day the doctors told me they’d given Christie a dose of the wrong medication, and her condition was spiraling downward. So when Reverend Richman said that, I laid into him. ‘OK. Wings and eyeballs, I’ll give you that,’ I said. I was trying to find a way to win at something, it seemed like I was losing everything. ‘But if design is evidence of a designer, Reverend, then let me ask you a question.’ ‘What’s that?’ he said, and I said, ‘What’s chaos evidence of?’”
“And what did he say to that?”
I looked from Lien-hua to Vanessa. “At first he didn’t say anything. I’d stumped him, so finally he says, ‘I don’t know, Dr. Bowers. What is chaos evidence of?’ But then, before I could reply, Benjamin answered.”
“Wait a minute. Who’s Benjamin?”
“One of the deacons at their church. He would come in with the pastor. He usually didn’t say much, just listened. Anyway, that day he answered my question.”
“About chaos?”
“Yeah.”
I walked past Lien-hua and stared out the window at the dirty white clouds scampering across the sky. “He whispered the answer kind of softly. But it was like he read my mind.”
“So what’s the answer? What is chaos evidence of?”
“Us. Human beings.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Well, Benjamin said something about how he knew I’d seen the worst kind of violence humans are capable of, and I mean, he was right. I have. So have you, Lien-hua, its wings and eyeballs, the evil that human beings do to each other…” I let my voice trail off.
Vanessa’s heart monitor hummed.
“What then?”
“He told me he’d seen evil too: the evil we do to ourselves. In people’s confessions and tears and prayers.” I hesitated for a second. “He said souls can be just as bloody and torn up as bodies can. He called it the other kind of violence.”
“The other kind of violence,” she echoed. We both looked at Vanessa. I had the feeling Lien-hua was remembering something, reliving something. “I think I agree with him,” she said at last. Something from the past was haunting her.
I wanted to ask her about it, but the time wasn’t right. I didn’t say anything.
And maybe I should have told her the rest, but I didn’t.
Maybe I should have explained that Donovan quietly reached over and held my hand in both of his. Maybe I should have told her that he prayed the simplest prayer I’d ever heard him say, a prayer for hope, a petition for mercy both for himself and for me, and that I just sat there with nothing to say as those two men tried to pass something along to me that my heart had lost-or maybe never had. And all the while Christie lay dying beside us.
No, living.
She was living beside us.
They were living beside her.
I was the one who was dying.
“You’re right, chaos is evidence of human beings,” Pastor Richman whispered to me after his prayer was over. “But hope is evidence of God. That’s the deeper design behind everything, Patrick. Hope despite the pain.”
Maybe I should have told Lien-hua those things, but I didn’t. All I said was, “Souls can be just as bloody and torn up as bodies… Yeah, I think I agree with him too.”
I glanced at my watch and stood up. I had to get going to pick up Tessa.
“By the way,” said Lien-hua softly, “I checked the cell phone records this morning. The call Vanessa got last night didn’t come from Joseph Grolin’s cell phone.” Back to business. Back to the present.
“Do we know whose?”
“No. The number was untraceable-surprise, surprise. But, when Vanessa was talking on the phone back at her house, she was gesturing with her hand. I think that whoever called her was someone she knew.”
“Hmm. Good point.”
“I wonder why the killer went to all the trouble to set up Grolin, and then sent him in like that just to get shot.”
“Maybe he wanted that explosion yesterday morning to end everything, and when we survived he just adjusted, went to plan B. Maybe he wanted to eliminate someone from our team-he knew that whoever ended up shooting Grolin would be taken off the case for a while. Or maybe he just did it because he could, for the thrill. I don’t know. Listen. I need to go get Tessa; can you see if you can track down that cult guy in New Mexico?”
“I thought Margaret was on that.”
“She is,” I said. “But right now I’m not sure who I can trust. So can you?”
She hesitated. “I’ll see what I can do.”
And with that, I left the hospital to pick up my stepdaughter, the raven who’d been blown onto my doorstep by this chaotic thing called life.
61
Tessa’s flight was scheduled to arrive at 11:32 a.m. I arrived at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport about forty-five minutes early, and walked up to the US Airways ticket counter.
The woman behind the counter smiled an automatic smile. Spoke automatic words. “Good morning, sir. Have you tried our automated ticketing kiosk set up for your convenience? Just swipe any major credit card and-”
“I’m meeting up with a subject: Tessa Ellis.” I showed her my FBI badge. “Arrives at 11:30 from Chicago. I want her off the plane first and her bags brought around out front, to the curb.”
By the look on her face I could tell I’d just overloaded all of her circuits. None of those words appeared on the script she’d been given. “It’s a very important case,” I added.
“Um… yes. Let me see.” She fumbled for a moment at her computer keyboard then disappeared into a back room to ask her supervisor what she was supposed to say. A minute later she reappeared with her smile fastened in place again. “Of course, sir. We will have the bags waiting for you, sir.”
I nodded. “Thank you.”
There aren’t many perks to my job. But it turns out there are a few.
The guys at the security checkpoint hassled me a little about bringing in my gun, but when I showed them my paperwork, federal ID, driver’s license, and told them my mother’s maiden name and favorite salsa recipe they finally let me through.
I grabbed some coffee at Chierio’s, the best coffee shop in any airport in the country. Based on the gently nurtured acidity, I guessed their blend came from the mountainous southeastern region of Colombia, the best country in the world to grow coffee beans. And other types of plants too, from what my friends in the DEA tell me.
The coffee was exquisite. And despite all the things on my mind, after three sips I realized that if I were to die right then and there I would die a happy man.
Some people say I take my coffee a little too seriously.
I took another sip of Chierio’s South Mountain Blend.
Naw.
Not a chance.
I headed to Gate C-14.
Alice led her two kids out of the Basilica of St. Lawrence in downtown Asheville and over to the car. She’d started taking them to church a few months ago when Garrett moved out. Those were hard, hard days, especially at first. She needed strength, and even from the start, coming here had seemed to help.
The basilica’s ceiling had the largest oval-shaped freestanding dome in the United States. The beauty and elegance inspired her, helped her look up toward the heavens again. And hearing the singing and the homilies seemed to help her think more about the things that really mattered, seemed to help her hate Garrett a little less for the things he’d done, seemed to help her feel hopeful about life once again, to trust the power of good over evil, of the future over the past. The angels over the monsters.