Sacrifices of Joy (20 page)

“I would not be surprised if he didn't do it.”

“Huh?” I looked up from where I lay amid the hotel's billowy sheets. Roman sat at the room's desk eating a whole pizza he'd picked up after getting me from the cathedral and bringing me to the room I'd booked by the airport. The television was on, broadcasting the late-night news.

“That man they arrested.” Roman licked sauce off of his fingers and nodded at the TV screen. “Jamal Abdul. I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't behind the terror attack. You sure you don't want any pizza, Ma?”

“No, no pizza,” I said, sitting up, trying to make myself care when everything in me just wanted to sleep. “Why? Why do you say that? About Jamal Abdul?”

Roman had not asked me why I was in San Diego. He didn't question why he had to pick me up from a church in Old Town.

But he had not left me yet, so I knew he was waiting for me to tell him. He could sense it was something major.

“His wife. What's her name again? Keisha,” he answered between munches.

“What about her?”

“The interview? Didn't you see it last night?”

“Was it breaking news?” I sat up fully now, recalling that I'd been meaning to make sure that I had not missed something about the terror attack story.
“Don't read too much into it, okay? I don't want you worrying.”
Laz's words.

“No, I mean, she just seemed so broken, confused. Genuine. And the thing about his luggage.”

“What about the luggage?”

Roman looked at me oddly, taking a deep swallow from a two-liter bottle of cola before answering. “She said he couldn't find his duffel bag just moments before the attack. Police are saying that he just told her that to keep his plans hidden, but she's not buying it. She thinks someone took his bag. What is it, Ma?”

I didn't realize my face was contorted. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, but I let my jaw relax. “Nothing, Roman. Just thinking how this might be one of the last Thursday nights we hang out like this. You're in school and moving up and out and away from me.” I wondered if he still wanted to leave San Diego and come back to Baltimore, as he'd stated earlier in the week. I did not know how to ask. My heart pounded as I tried to sort out what I should be doing about . . . everything.

Mirror moments. Seeing who you are, what you're made of.

“Why'd you come out here, Mom? What were you doing at that church?” He avoided eye contact with me as he finally just went after the conversation we both knew had to happen.

“I found your father.”

The late-night news blared on. Weather. Sports. Education report. The theme music for
The Tonight Show
came on, followed by the comedic monologue. A full thirty-seven minutes went by before another word was said between us.

“He's not the man we thought he was. He lied about everything.” My words.

“I think we already knew that, Ma.”

“He lied about his identity. It's worse than I'd imagined.” I pulled up the images on my phone, passed my phone to him. As he looked at the scanned marriage licenses in silence, I took out the last sheets of paper, with the birth and death certificates and photocopied ID. Roman took both from me and stared at them for a few moments before looking back at me.

“He needs to be reported to the police.”

I collapsed back into the bed, a loud groan escaping my lips.

“It's been a long, hard road, Ma.” My son spoke gently. “You've done all you can do. You've done the best job a mom could do.” He tapped the paper in front of him. “I've got this from here. I've already sent these images to my e-mail. Get some sleep.”

“Leon would have known what to do.” I said it before thinking.

“And Leon trained me well.” Roman stood, walked to the door, then looked back at me. “I'm not mad at the man who fathered me. I pity him, and am glad that I will never have to live my life like he did. I'm just grateful for the man who helped raised me.” As he stood at attention at the door, I saw the wisdom, the confidence, the gentle love, and sacrificing nurture that had been Leon. The observation both warmed me and broke a little bit more of my heart.

“Mom, we've been through a lot over the years. I don't know that I've been able to fully tell you how much I love you and appreciate all you ever did to make sure I never lacked for anything. My father may have given me my name and my DNA, but you've given me what I need to be a man of integrity. Now, I've got this, Mom. I'm taking care of this for you, for me . . .” He paused. “For all of us. You can officially cross RiChard St. James off your to-do list once and for all. Have a safe trip back home.”

I saw the look on his face as he left my room, and I knew that he had a mission in mind that he would not stop at anything to complete.

I had a mission too.

After dozing off and on for another hour or so, I stood and stretched. My mind was alert, my confidence high.

If I could track down a man who'd evaded me for nearly twenty years, who deceived and lied to me and lived under all kinds of different names and aliases, surely I could figure out the identify and whereabouts of a man who was just in my office this week and who may be an unknown threat to national security.

My life, the circumstances in it, the men I loved and lost, the heartbreak, the challenges, even the work I did and the dangerous clients I tangled with in the past all had prepared me for this moment.

That is what my gut told me and nothing in me doubted it.

As I walked across the room to retrieve my phone from where Roman had left it on the hotel room's desk, I caught my reflection in the mirror that hung over the dresser.

I had bags under my eyes. My hair was matted on one side and my eyeliner was smudged.

But I was beautiful.

Not perfect, but becoming.

I reached for my cell phone. 1:32 a.m. I was certain Laz was waking up for his workday out on the East Coast. I typed in a text message and then pressed send.

I had one more picture to scan into my phone.

Sitting at the desk in the hotel room, I'd laid out everything I had or knew about the man I'd met in the airport. I'd opened the folder I started about him, organized my notes, the questions I'd had, the answers I'd never gotten.

I looked over what I had: his illustration of the cat sitting in the window; the name Bennett; the phone number with the Ohio area code; and my notes stating that he “did not exist”; that he was obsessed with the Internet and what he perceived as the evils of social media as showing mankind's tendency to be self-centered; and that he seemed fixated on identifying heroes in humanity. Oh, and then there was the license plate of the car from West Virginia. Carlos Dean Jessup. The green pickup truck with Pennsylvania tags whose plates I wasn't able to get. Also the e-mails from Everybody Anybody and the mysterious Twitter follower.

As I reviewed what I had, I remembered other details. He'd stated during our first conversation at the airport that he had attended a state university and majored in theology. He'd also asserted in one of our “sessions” that he had a PhD.

These were starting points.

I looked at what I had in front of me, knowing I had at least two actions I could take.

His phone number and the drawing.

I checked the time. 2:04 a.m., which meant it was 5:04 on the East Coast, assuming he was even there.

I used the hotel phone to slowly dial the number, not 100 percent sure what I would say or do if I got an answer, but the urgency I'd felt yesterday had returned. I had to call right then, regardless of time. A part of me suspected that the number would not work. I was right.

“We're sorry, but the number you are dialing does not exist. Please hang up and try again. Thank you.”

I put a checkmark next to the phone number in my notes. It was most likely a prepaid number whose owner's whereabouts would not be able to be tracked at the moment. I took out the drawing. Using my phone's document scanning feature once more, I snapped a picture of it and then e-mailed it to myself. A brochure on the desk detailed that the hotel had a twenty-four-hour business center where three workstations were set up with Internet access and printing. I threw on some sweats and tennis shoes, comfortable work clothes for my mission, and headed down there immediately.

Another man, a young executive-looking type with tired red eyes and wearing a black suit he'd probably had on since yesterday morning, sat pecking away at one of the computer keyboards. “There's a coffee machine around the corner,” he remarked as I took a seat two computers away from him. He spoke with a sharp New England accent.

“Thanks,” I murmured as I logged on to the free Wi-Fi.

“Yep, there's nothing like getting the deals done before everyone else has even wiped the crust from their eyes.” His eyes were glued to the monitor in front of him and his fingers moved nonstop over the keys.

He was there for business, making money, setting up deals. I was on a mission to save the world. I chuckled at myself, but for once, I did not allow any doubt to creep in. I needed my entire attention and energy to complete the task at hand. There was no room for wavering. My flight back to Baltimore left in eight hours. I could sleep on the way back home; however, I did not want to get on the plane without having some clear direction and answers to take back to Baltimore with me.

I recalled Camille's sudden mood change at the end of our conversation, and I felt uneasy.
I'm not crazy and I don't trust her. I'm following my gut.

I bowed my head and prayed a silent prayer:
And, Jesus, please guide my steps and efforts. Your will be done in my life. I surrender to you, even in all matters concerning RiChard.

I opened my eyes and took a moment to exhale, to consider what I had just expressed, to mull over what I'd just asked for. I noticed the keyboard two workstations down from me had grown quiet. The businessman, for the first time, had paused from his work and stared at me. Had he never seen someone pray before?

“Morning meditation is good for the soul.” His eyes darted uneasily from me back to his computer screen.

“Yes, especially when you know who you are talking to and what He's capable of doing.”

He nodded uncomfortably and resumed typing. I smiled. That was the first time I'd shared anything about my faith with anyone in a long, long time.

It felt good.

I got down to business.

Image search.

I pulled up the scanned drawing of the cat on the windowsill I'd sent to my e-mail and uploaded the image to the search engine.

A gazillion results popped up onto the screen. Image after image of cats and windows and other seemingly random objects filled the monitor with what looked like an infinity of more images and Web site links to follow.

A few years back, when Roman was sixteen and had run away from home looking for his father, I'd done a search of my son's nicknames, trying to find any presence of him online. It wasn't until after I'd added a couple of extra key words that my search was narrowed and completed.

There was an option to enter a descriptive word in the search box, but what key word could I add? Bennett? No. That man seemed to not want to be tied down to a name, I concluded, thinking of how he preferred his identity to be ambiguous.

Theology. Evil. Good. Heroism. Existence.

I added all five words to the search box and then nearly fell out of my chair. Only two results displayed.

The first was a link to a Web site that served as a digital database for dissertations and theses worldwide. It was a subscriptions-only site available to universities, libraries, and other similar institutions. Beyond the link and the information posted about subscribing, there were no other hints as to how the image and key words from my search were related to it.

The second result led me to disturbing information.

It was a link to a YouTube video that had since been taken down, I discovered. The only thing that remained was a screenshot from the video and the short description underneath.

The creator of the video was named E.P., and the young white male in the screenshot holding up the book was not the man I was searching for. This young man looked to be about twenty-one or twenty-two years old with sandy hair that drooped over his eyes and touched the tip of his nose. He had babyish features and black wire eyeglasses, giving him a look of innocence.

I zoomed in to get a better look at the book he'd held up for his Webcam. It was bound in a blue hardcover and the title, in small gold letters, was blurred in the image.

What I found disturbing were the search results I got when I tried to find out more information about the young man. Using the screenshot for an image search and entering E.P. as keywords, the first result was a news article detailing his death. His name was Ephraim Peterson and he'd been found dead in his car at the bottom of a lake just three weeks ago. He was only twenty-two. Police believed the Ohio native had swerved off a bridge in the nighttime hours while driving home after working at a neighbor's farm. There were no witnesses to the crash, no continuing investigation, the whole thing deemed a terrible tragedy.

He'd died two days after he'd posted his video.

I tried to find more information about him, but there was nothing else to be found. No Facebook profile, no Twitter feed, not even a white pages listing for an address or phone number. If not for the YouTube video and the article about his death, there would have been no record of his existence, at least on the Internet. The only other fact I discovered from my search was that the town he was from was in the same area code where the phone of the man from the airport had been registered.

That could not be a coincidence.

There's so much more to this story. I know it. I feel it.
I shook my head, straining to think of what else I could do.

I tried again in vain to see if the video would play, but it had been removed, or maybe even corrupted somehow. There had been only two views, and I was a current viewer.

“Excuse me,” I called over to my fellow night owl worker, “do you know how to enlarge an image?”

The businessman rolled his seat next to mine and clicked a few buttons, making the screenshot of Ephraim Peterson holding up the book even larger, before rolling back to his workstation without a word.

“Thanks,” I murmured as I tried to make out the title of the book. The words were still blurred and the title looked ridiculously long, but I could make out a few of the letters and piece together some of the words:

There was no author listed, but the publisher's imprint was at the far bottom of the front cover. I was certain that the words “Window” and “Press” made up part of the publisher's name. Or maybe that's just what I wanted to see as I was determined to find answers, and somehow connect that man to all that was currently wrong in the world.

One last Web search yielded nothing of significance with the words from the title or imprint. If this book existed, and clearly it did because it was in poor Ephraim Peterson's hands, its author, and publisher, had kept it well hidden.

Self-published. Had to be. I could not imagine that the man worked along with anyone else, especially if, as he'd asserted, he had not talked to anyone in years.

I was making a lot of assumptions I realized; but every conclusion I came to made perfect sense to me. I just did not know how to explain it to anyone else.

I logged off the computer, shut it down.

“Take care of yourself. Don't work too hard.” I smiled over at the man whose fingers had to be tired and cramped as he had not stopped moving them across the keyboard.

“No such thing as working too hard.”

There was no humor to his voice. No light to his eyes. No life in his shoulders. He had on a designer suit, designer shoes. Even the briefcase that sat on a chair next to him had a brand name. I imagined everything in his life was high end and he would keep working until he had that car, that house, that jet, that position, that whatever it was that would never be enough.

Yes, I was in the right field. I'd made the perfect career choice for my gifts, talents, and interests. My focus in life, though often confused and flawed, ultimately was to help others be the best they could be. That's where my heart was as I searched for answers to help, to heal, to listen to and encourage those I served
.

The Bible verse crossed my mind as I closed the door to the business room behind me.

The Whole Soul Center.

This was my purpose, my God-given calling, and it was already up, running, and growing.

I'd have to talk to Laz more about the proposed move to Atlanta.

For now, I had another call to make.