Takedown (21 page)

G
avin turned onto Prospect Avenue and immediately began looking for house numbers. When he thought of some of the doors he
had walked through over the years, it was weird this one should make him feel so nervous. He was familiar with criminals.
He knew the crime business inside out. He was comfortable with crime. There, he was the expert. He pressed the gas when he
realized number eight was at least another block farther down.

There it was. Two cars in the driveway and a few in the street. Conservative cars. The kind of car you would never be able
to find in a parking lot without first putting your key in someone else’s door. Nothing like the Tiger he was driving. Already
he felt out of place. He found a parking spot a couple of houses down.

A small Tudor-style house with a well-manicured winding brick walkway. At the front door he stood on a baseball home plate
with “You’re Safe” written on it in black letters. Not seeing a doorbell, he knocked.

“Come on in. The door’s open,” called an unfamiliar voice from inside.

Gavin entered a small foyer that immediately led into a living room where Father Lauer and three other men were sitting on
an L-shaped couch. A ceiling fan above was going full tilt, and several half-full glasses of seltzer with ice sat on a coffee
table in front of the couch. No air conditioning. Hot. Smelled like cookies but he
didn’t see any. Father Lauer, wearing black slacks and a white T-shirt, stood up and extended his hand.

“Hi, Detective. We were beginning to think you wouldn’t make it.”

“Sorry. Something came up and I was having a hard time getting away. Goes with the territory.” A territory he was completely
ignoring at the moment, he thought. Maybe he
had
lost his mind.

“Well, let me introduce you to my friends. Detective Gavin Pierce… this is Pastor David Benjamin, Pastor Jim Hartington,
and Pastor Robbie Mullens,” Lauer said, moving from left to right along the couch. By the time the last person was introduced,
Gavin had already forgotten most of the names. This scared him. As a highly trained detective, he was considered an expert
in remembering details, especially names.

Lauer continued. “All three are local pastors and this is David’s house. We meet here once a week and talk and pray about
the needs and visions of our separate and very different congregations.”

Gavin nodded.
What am I doing here?
he thought. Aloud, he said, “You told me this was a ‘salt’ meeting? I thought maybe that meant you were just having lunch.”

“Salt speaks of covenant,” Benjamin explained in a serious tone. The pastor was about fifty, moderately heavy, brown hair
with a white goatee. “We find the reference in the fourth verse of the first chapter of Acts. The Greek word
sunalizomai,
from which I am taking an inductive leap, is translated into English, ‘Gathering them together.’”

Mullens laughed warmly. “Is
that
why we call these Salt meetings?” he said in a deep, booming voice with a southern accent. He had a red, round face and even
sitting he looked tall, and probably had a cowboy hat stashed somewhere to go with his boots.

“Yes… let me finish,” Benjamin went on. “Arab societies to
this day retain such expressions as ‘there is salt between us’ and ‘I love you as I love salt.’”

“I love you as I love salt?” Mullens asked incredulously, then looked at Gavin and explained, “No one on earth researches
like our friend David here.”

Benjamin shrugged with a smile. “I’m not making this stuff up. Anyway, Gavin, we have determined not to let our obvious denominational
differences get between us as we keep Jesus as our focus and common denominator. For example,” he said, reintroducing everyone
with their church affiliations. Gavin nodded but wanted to run. Chris was right. He
had
lost his mind.

Mullens smiled. “In other words, we aren’t here to major in the minors. We’re all in the same boat, and we’ll do a whole lot
better if we’d all try rowing in the same direction.”

“I’m with you, Gavin,” Hartington said with an English accent. He was older, seventy to seventy-five, shorter, and looked,
Gavin thought, like a happy Hobbit in a business suit. “I thought we were just here to thank the Lord Jesus for a bit of lunch.”

“More seltzer?” said a female voice.

“Thank you, sweetheart,” Benjamin said. “Gavin, this is my wife, Rachel.”

Gavin turned to see an attractive woman about ten years younger than her husband. She placed a tray down with fresh ice and
seltzer. “Hi,” Gavin said.

She smiled. “Can I get you something else, Gavin?”

“No thanks. Seltzer’s fine.”

She smiled again and left.

Benjamin now leaned forward, his thick brows furrowed together. “How is it that we can help you, Gavin?” he said with concern
in his voice.

“And
sit down
before you give us all stiff necks.” Mullens motioned behind Gavin.

Gavin turned to find only a baby grand piano filling up the rest of the room. He sat on the bench. “This is hard for me to
talk about… because I find it difficult to believe any of it. I need someone—a specialist, if you will—to do a job for me,
or at least tell where I can go to get help.”

“What kind of a job?” Hartington asked.

Gavin looked at Hartington. Another face of concern. Gentle men. A circle of gentle men. What he needed was a Howitzer, and
here he was sitting with men who seemed likely to want to
counsel
Krogan.

“That day we met at the accident, you mentioned demons,” Lauer said, apparently trying to help.

Gavin nodded. “Some of you might remember a serial killer we arrested a couple years ago named Karl Dengler?”

“Krogan?” Mullens blurted in a loud voice, which appeared to be his normal volume. “Yup. Remember him well. He was a real
animal.”

Gavin nodded. “As real as they get.”

“Oh yeah,” Mullens said. “A member of my congregation was at the New York Aquarium when he drove into the whale tank with
a truck. She’s all right now, but she spent a week in the hospital at the time.”

“A very scary week,” Benjamin said to Mullens. All heads nodded with frowns of concern and interest.

“Go on, Detective,” Lauer said.

“Wait a minute!” Mullens interjected before Gavin could start. “Detective Gavin Pierce. Homicide. You were there, too… at
the aquarium.”

“That’s right.” There was something about this loud guy knowing Gavin’s business that helped ease the nerves a little.

“I knew your name sounded familiar. Your father was killed?”

“My grandfather, yes,” Gavin said, then proceeded to speak
through the
I’m sorries.
“What you might also remember was that the passenger in the truck Krogan was driving was killed in the crash. And this wasn’t
his first or last crash. But with every crash on record, the passenger owned the vehicle and died, so we never had a witness
to question. That is, every other passenger but one. Who she was and how she survived isn’t important, but what
was
important was that we were now going to find out who this mystery driver was. At least that’s what we thought. After interrogating
her thoroughly, we found she had zero memory of the driver. We then decided to use hypnosis.”

“I don’t remember the hypnosis part,” Mullens said. “And I read everything written on the case.”

“We never let the media know about the hypnosis. For that matter, we never let the department know about it either. Anyway,
under hypnosis she remembered the driver and told us his name was Krogan. That’s when it got weird. When we asked her to go
back to the first time she met Krogan, she started speaking to us in ancient Hebrew.”

Mullens was about to say something, but Benjamin motioned for him to let Gavin continue.

“The psychologist thought she was having past-life experiences. We went with that for a while but later found out that the
psychologist had somehow tapped into a demon who was reminiscing over old times with another demon named Krogan.”

Hartington grinned and pointed at Gavin with a short, shaking finger. “So you think this Karl Dengler chap you have buttoned
up in the clinker is possessed by this Krogan?”

“Not exactly,” Gavin said, then exhaled, surprised they had followed him so far, but knowing they would never believe the
next part. “When we arrested Dengler, Krogan, the demon, was sent into a giant tortoise and then held captive at the Bronx
Zoo for the last two and a half years. And now the tortoise is dead and Krogan
is on the loose again in the body of a WWX wrestler named Jack-hammer Hoban, who recently changed his name to—”

“Krogan,” Mullens said. The others looked at him. “Excuse me, but this is all over the news now. And, yes… I do check in
on the WWX once in a while.”

Benjamin rolled his eyes. Hartington said something to Mullens about the WWX, probably interested in what channel it was on,
Gavin thought. Lauer was looking straight at Gavin. Nobody was laughing at him. They hadn’t told him to leave. They looked
as though they wanted to hear more. But they were ministers, Gavin figured, so they were probably just being polite now and
would laugh about him later.

“Could we back up a little to the tortoise?” Hartington asked.

Gavin nodded, hoping he wouldn’t have to repeat everything he had said.

“You said the demon was in a tortoise and the tortoise was in the Bronx Zoo?”

“I don’t believe I read
that
in the newspaper
either,
” Mullens said, then laughed loud and easy.

“Yes,” Gavin said.

“Why didn’t the demon leave the tortoise while it was at the zoo?” Hartington asked.

“Because the tortoise was still alive. The tortoise was chosen because they live longer than humans… but not when they’re
killed. As soon as the tortoise died, the demon left and found Hoban and took him.”

Hartington frowned. “Demons can’t leave things that are alive?”

“It’s a theory,” Benjamin said. “For the demons to get out of the swine herd that Jesus cast them into, the entire herd committed
suicide. And though demons were afraid of Jesus, there is no account of them fleeing people to avoid an inevitable clash.”

“What is it you want us to do, Detective?” Lauer said.

“I need someone who knows what to do with this thing,” Gavin said, then went on to describe what happened to his house and
how Krogan would keep coming back. Mullens remembered reading about the house crash in the paper. “I was hoping you might
be able to tell me what to do.”

The pastors looked at each other with concern, none of them saying a word.

“May I ask another tortoise question, Gavin?” Hartington said.

“Sure.”

“How did you get Krogan in the tortoise? What did you say? And if you could do it the first time, why don’t you just do it
again?”

“Me? I did nothing. I don’t know anything about this stuff. Buck did it.”

“Buck?” Benjamin said.

“Who’s Buck, Detective?” Lauer said.

“Buchanan… Reverend Buchanan. He just likes to be called Buck.”

The room fell silent. Everyone looked at one another as if Gavin had just told them he was James Bond. Finally Benjamin said,
“The Reverend Jesse J. Buchanan?”

“You know Reverend Buchanan?” Mullens was without a smile for the first time since Gavin had walked in.

“Yes, but he can’t help right now. He had a heart attack and he’s fighting for his life in the hospital.”

“I thought he was dead,” Benjamin said.

“So did Krogan, which was what Buck wanted. After he lost his wife, son, and daughter-in-law in a Krogan crash, he took his
granddaughter and vanished. He said enough was enough and it was time for a change of occupations. But I wanted Krogan bad
and convinced him to return to action one more time. I kind of wish now that I’d left well enough alone.”

“Buchanan burned out,” Benjamin said, as if talking to himself. “Sometimes I think I’m burning out.”

Mullens laughed. “You already are, my friend. Charred through and through. But that’s okay. We still love you.”

“It’s so nice to be cared for by those who aren’t afraid to speak the truth in love,” Benjamin said sarcastically but then
added a wink.

“You did the right thing, Gavin,” Hartington said while the other two continued. “I’m sure Jesse Buchanan told you there’s
a war going on. If we’re not attacking, we’re being attacked.”

Gavin nodded. “Buck has told me that. I just don’t know how. That’s why I’m here.”

“How much do you know about spiritual warfare, Detective?” Father Lauer asked.

“I feel like a baby walking through a jungle. Can you guys help me or not?”

Mullens stood up and walked over to Gavin, putting his hand on his shoulder. “Son, before you mentioned Buchanan, your story
sounded mighty wild, and I for one thought we had a loon on our hands. Meet them all the time. I want to apologize. Reverend
Buchanan came through our church once, and that meeting lasted sixteen hours. People came from all over and were delivered
of everything from alcoholism to acrophobia.”

“What’s acrophobia?” Gavin said.

“Fear of heights,” Benjamin answered.

“Fear of heights?” Gavin said incredulously. “I have fear of heights and Buck knew that. Why didn’t he fix it?”

Hartington giggled. “Just because you’re afraid of heights doesn’t mean you have demon problems. Most of the time our problems
have nothing to do with demons. But when they do—”

“Buchanan’s the man,” Mullens interjected.

“He’s a legend,” Benjamin said. “He has a powerful anointing, like no one I’ve ever seen.”

“What Jim’s sayin’ here is true,” Mullens said. “You can go through a hundred problems before you find one with a demon attached,
but when they’re attached to the problem, ooooh, baby. And this Krogan fella doesn’t sound like your basic demon.”

“According to Buck, he’s anything but basic. During the hypnosis, he was described as being at Jesus’ crucifixion, laughing.
And Buck said he thought Jesus spoke about Krogan when saying a demon like him would require prayer and fasting.”