The Heaven Trilogy (39 page)

Kent snapped his head up. TASK COMPLETE, the screen read. $20,000,000.00 TRANSFERRED.

A tremble seized his bones. He returned to the body, tearing about it now. His watch went on the wrist, his socks and shoes on the feet.

Satisfied, he withdrew his floppy disk from the drive and exited the program. A fleeting thought skipped through his head. The thought that he had just transferred twenty million dollars into his personal accounts successfully. The thought that he was a very rich man. Goodness!

But the overpowering need to flee undetected shoved the thought from his mind. He emptied half the contents from his briefcase into the tequila box. The incriminating half. What remained in the briefcase represented the work of a dedicated programmer including a personal reminder to speak to Borst Monday morning about efficiency issues. Yes sir, show them he fully expected to return to work on Monday, the morning after a casual fishing trip and a late night at the office.

Kent yanked the cadaver, now fully dressed in his clothes, to a standing position so that it leaned against his chair like some kind of wax museum piece. Here rigor mortis was his friend. He had buttoned the shirt wrong, he saw, and the slacks were hitched up high on one side. Mr. Brinkley looked like some kind of computer nerd short the pocket protector. But none of this mattered.

The corpse stared wide eyed at the poster of the white yacht. Now that Kent thought about it, he should have closed those bug eyes like they did when someone died on television.

He backed to the door, surveyed his work, and pulled the nine-millimeter semiautomatic Uncle Jerry had given him from the box.
Okay boy, now you're gonna do this.
He lifted the pistol. Once he pulled the trigger, he would have to fly. No telling how far the report might travel.

But Mr. Brinkley was having none of it. At least not yet. He suddenly slipped to the side and toppled to the floor, stiff as a board.

Kent cursed and bounded over to the body. He jerked Mr. Brinkley upright and planted him in place. “Stay put, you old fish,” he mumbled through gritted teeth. “You're dying standing up, whether you like it or not.”

He crouched and squinted. The gun suddenly bucked in his hand.
Bang!
The report almost knocked him from his feet. Panicked, he fired twice more, quickly, into the body—
Bang! Bang!
The body stood tall, still staring dumbly forward, oblivious to the bullets that had just torn through its flesh.

Kent swallowed and tossed the weapon back into the box. Shaking badly now, he staggered forward and yanked a two-gallon can from the box. He gave Mr. Brinkley a nudge and let him topple to the floor. He emptied the flammable mixture onto the body and then doused the surrounding carpet. He scanned the office, picked up the box, and backed to the door.

It occurred to Kent, just before he tossed the match, that he was about to go off the deep end here. Right off into some abyss, spread-eagle. He struck the match and let it flare. What on Earth was he about to do? He was about to put the finishing touches on the perfect crime, that's what he was about to do. He was about to kill Kent Anthony. He was about to join Gloria and Spencer in the ground, six feet under. At least that was the plan, and it was a brilliant plan.

Kent backed into the hall and tossed the match.

Whoomp!

The initial ignition knocked him clear across the hall and onto his seat. He scrambled to his feet and stared, unbelieving, at the blaze. A wall of orange flames reached for the ceiling, crackling and spewing black smoke. Fire engulfed the entire office. Mr. Brinkley's body lay like a log, flaming with the rest, like Shadrach or Meshack in the fiery furnace. The accelerant mixture worked as advertised. This cadaver was going to burn. Burn, baby, burn.

Then Kent fled the bank. He burst through the back door, tequila box in hand, heart slamming. His Lexus sat parked around the corner to his left. He ran to his right. He would not need the car again. Ever.

He'd run three blocks straight down the back alleys before he heard the first siren. He slowed by a trash bin, palmed the gun, and ditched the box. Behind him a cloud of smoke billowed into the night sky. He had known the old wood-frame building would go up, but he had not expected the fire to grow so quickly.

Kent looked back four blocks later, eyes peeled and unblinking. This time an orange glow lit the sky. A small smile of wonder crossed his face. Sirens wailed on the night air.

Five minutes later he entered the bus depot on Harmon and Wilson, produced a key to locker 234, and withdrew an old, brown briefcase. The case held eleven thousand dollars in twenty-dollar bills—traveling expenses—a bus ticket, a stick of deodorant, a toothbrush with some toothpaste, and a passport under his new name. It was all he owned now.

This and a few dozen accounts holding twenty million dollars.

Then Kent walked out into the street and disappeared into the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Eight Days Later

HELEN BROUGHT two glasses of ice tea into her living room and handed one to Pastor Madison. Returning to her own home was the one small blessing in this latest turn in events. No need to stay at Kent's if he was gone.

“Thank you, Helen. So . . .”

“So,” she repeated.

“So they've concluded the fire resulted from a freak robbery attempt. You read this story?” he asked, lifting the
Denver Post
in one hand.

“Yes, I saw that.”

The pastor continued anyway. “They say evidence from the scene clearly shows a second party—presumably a robber. Evidently this guy found the rear door open and entered the bank, hoping for some easy cash. Unfortunately, Kent was there, ‘working late on a Sunday night, not unusual for Kent Anthony. The thirty-six-year-old programmer was well known for working odd hours, often into the early hours of the morning.'”

“Hmmm,” Helen offered.

“It says that the investigators speculate that the robber stumbled into Kent, panicked, and shot him dead. He then returned and torched the place—probably in an effort to erase evidence of his presence. He's still at large, and the search continues. The FBI has no current suspects. No actual robbery was committed . . . They estimate the fire damage to reach three million dollars, a fraction of what it could have been, thanks to the rapid response of the fire department.” He lowered the paper and sipped at his tea.

“And of course, we know the rest, because it's just about the funeral.”

Helen did not respond. There was not much to say anymore. Things had dropped off her plateau of understanding. She was guided by the unknown now. By the kind of faith she had never dreamed possible.

“What's happening to his belongings?” Bill asked.

“His will leaves it all to Gloria and Spencer. I suppose the state will get it now—I don't know and quite frankly, I don't care. From what I've seen, there's no use for this stuff in the next life anyway.”

He nodded and sipped again. For a while they sat in silence.

“I have to tell you, Helen. This is almost too much for me.”

“I know. It seems difficult, doesn't it?”

Bill cocked his head, and she knew he was letting his frustration get the better of him. “No, Helen. This does not
seem
difficult. Not everything is about
seeming
this way or that way. This
is
difficult, okay?” He shifted uncomfortably. “I mean, first Kent's wife dies of a freak disease, and that was unfortunate. I understand these things happen. But then his son is killed in a freak accident. And now we've hardly put away the funeral garb, and
he's
murdered in some freak robbery attempt. Strange enough? No, not quite. Meanwhile you, the mother, the grandmother, the mother-in-law, are walking around—quite literally—talking about some game in heaven. Some master plan beyond normal human comprehension. To what end? They're all dead! Your family is all dead, Helen!”

“Things are not always what . . .”

“. . . what they seem,” Bill finished. “I know. You've told me that a hundred times. But some things
are
what they seem! Gloria
seems
quite dead, and guess what? She
is
dead!”

“No need to patronize me, young man.” Helen smiled gently. “And in reality, she's more alive now than dead, so even there you are less right than wrong. In practical terms, you might be right, but the kingdom of heaven is not what most humans would call practical. Quite the opposite. You ever read the teachings of Christ? ‘If a man asks for your tunic, give him your cloak as well.' You ever do that, Bill? ‘If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out.' You see anybody smash their television lately, Bill? ‘Anyone who does not take up his cross'—that's death, Bill—‘and follow me is not worthy of me . . . Let the dead bury the dead.' And it was God speaking those words, as a guideline by which to live life.”

“Well, I'm not talking about the teachings of Christ here. I'm talking about people dying without apparent reason.”

Helen searched him deep with her eyes, feeling empathy and not knowing really why. He was a good man. He simply had not yet seen what was to be seen. “Well, I
am
talking about the teachings of Christ, Bill, which, whether you like it or not, include death. His own death. The death of the martyrs. The death of those on whose blood the church is built.”

She looked away, and suddenly a hundred images from her own past crashed through her mind. She swallowed. “The reason you look for is here, Pastor.” She waved her hand slowly through the air. “All around us. We just don't often see it clearly, and when we do, it is not often as we think it should appear. We're so bent on stuffing ourselves full of life—full of
happiness
—that we lose sight of God. Make up our own.”

“God is a God of joy and peace and happiness,” he offered.

“Yes. But the Teacher did not have in mind sitcoms that make you laugh or happy sermons about what a breeze the narrow road really is. Heavens, no. What is pure, Bill? Or excellent or admirable? The death of a million people in the Flood? God evidently thought so. He is incapable of acts that are not admirable, and it was he who brought about the Flood. How about the slaying of children in Jericho? There are few Bible stories that are not as terrible as they are happy. We just prefer to leave out the terrible part, but that only makes the good anemic.” She turned from him and gazed at the picture of Christ in crucifixion.

“We are encouraged to
participate
in the sufferings of Christ, not to pretend they were feel-happy times. ‘Take this in remembrance of me; this is my blood, this is my body,' he said. Not, find yourselves an Easter bunny and hunt for chocolate eggs in remembrance of me. We are told to
meditate
on Scripture, even the half that details the consequence of evil, the conquest of Jericho and all. Not to pretend our God has somehow changed since the time of Christ. Obviously, Paul's idea of admirable and noble is quite different from ours. God forgive us, Bill. We have mocked his victory by whitewashing the enemy for the sake of our neighbor's approval.”

He blinked and drew a deep breath. “Imagine me talking like that from the pulpit. It would scare the breath out of most of them.” He lowered his head, but his jaw was clenched, she saw. Suddenly those images from her past were crashing through her mind again, and she closed her eyes briefly. She should tell him, she thought.

“Let me tell you a story, Bill. A story about a man of God unlike any I have known. A soldier. He was my soldier.” Now the emotions flooded her with a vengeance, and she noted her hands were trembling. “He was from Serbia, you know, before he came to the States. Fought in the war there with a small team of special forces. He served under a lieutenant, a
horrible
man.” She shuddered as she said it. “A God hater who slept with the devil.”

She had to stop for a few moments. The memories came too fast, with too much intensity, and she breathed a prayer.
Father, forgive me
. She glanced up at the red bottle in her hutch, sitting, calling from the past. From the corner of her eye she saw that Bill was staring at her.

“Anyway, they walked into a small town one day. The commander led them straight to the church at the center. The soldier said that he knew with one look into the lieutenant's eyes that he had come with cruel intentions. It was a gross understatement.”

She swallowed and plowed on before this thing got the best of her. “The commander had them gather the townspeople, about a hundred of them, I think, and then he began his games.” Helen looked up at the cross again. “The priest was a God-fearing man. For hours the commander played his game—bent upon forcing the priest to renounce Christ before the townsfolk. The horror of those hours was so reprehensible that I can hardly speak of them, Bill. To hear of them I would weep for hours.”

Tears slipped from Helen's eyes and fell to her lap.

“The soldier was appalled by what he saw. He tried in vain to stop the lieutenant— almost lost his own life. But in the end the priest died. He died a martyr for the love of Christ. There is a monument to him in the town now. It is a cross rising from a green lawn bearing the inscription, ‘No Greater Love Has Any Man.' The day after the priest's death, they collected some of his blood and sealed it into several small crystal bottles, so they would not forget.”

She stood and walked to the hutch. She'd told no one other than her daughter of this, but it was time, wasn't it? Yes, it was time she spread this seed. Her breathing was coming thick as she pulled open the glass doors. She placed her fingers around the small bottle and pulled it out. The container was only slightly larger than her hand.

Helen returned to her seat and sat slowly, her mind swirling with the images. “The soldier went back to the village the next day to beg for their forgiveness. They gave him one of the bottles filled with the martyr's blood.” Helen held the bottle out on her palm. “Never to worship or to idolize, they told him. But to remind him of the price paid for his soul.”