The Saint of Wolves and Butchers Read online

  4

  “It must be expensive to feed him if he eats steak all the time,” Maddy said. “We don’t even do that, and we’re people.” She was walking a little ahead of Skottie and her hood was up, her face hidden from view, but she sounded happy, swinging Bear’s makeshift rope leash back and forth.

  “I think Bear gets treated differently than most dogs,” Skottie said. The plastic bag full of steak and Oreos and small golden potatoes smacked into her leg with every other step she took.

  “Probably because he’s smarter and bigger and cuter.”

  “He’s cute?”

  “In a scary kind of way.”

  “I think it’s probably because Travis doesn’t have anyone else,” Skottie said. “I guess I’d treat a pet differently if I didn’t have you to worry about.”

  “You can always let me go live with Dad,” Maddy said. “Then you wouldn’t have to worry about me at all.”

  Skottie wasn’t sure whether she had walked into a trap or had accidentally taken the conversation in a bad direction. At some point, she had lost her sense of such things. Bear led the way, stopping at the occasional tree or fire hydrant or parked car to sniff around. Maddy kept her head down, and Skottie couldn’t tell what her daughter was thinking or how best to approach her, how to get her talking again. And they’d been having such a good afternoon.

  “Is that where he is?” Maddy broke the silence, pointing up at an eight-story concrete building. Her voice was flat and emotionless now.

  Skottie knew what she meant. “Yeah. That’s your dad’s hotel.”

  “Will he be coming for Thanksgiving tomorrow?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “So you’re making him stay at that place all alone on Thanksgiving?”

  “That’s his choice. I didn’t ask him to come here.”

  “Of course he came here. He loves me. You can’t just take his kid away and expect him not to care.”

  Skottie felt her face flush and she clamped her mouth shut so she wouldn’t say the first thought that had popped into her head: If he really cared, why did he wait six months to come see you? Instead she stared at the blank outer wall of the hotel. They were behind it, cutting through the parking lot of a strip mall a quarter mile from Emmaline’s house, and the hotel’s architect hadn’t bothered to make the back of the building attractive. Skottie wondered whether Brandon was staying on the other side, the pretty side, or was somewhere up there watching them from the window of his room. What kind of view did he have? Was he lonely?

  “He’s probably lonely,” Maddy said.

  Startled, Skottie stumbled over a crack in the pavement, the grocery bag bouncing up high before slamming back into her thigh.

  “I’m sorry,” Maddy said. “I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

  Bear had found something interesting under a twiggy hedge at the side of the parking lot, and they stood there for a long minute waiting for him to finish exploring.

  “I understand,” Skottie said. “You miss your dad. Sometimes I miss him, too.”

  “Then let’s invite him over tomorrow.”

  “Um . . . I don’t . . .” Even if she wanted to ask Brandon to dinner, she knew Emmaline wouldn’t let him past the front door. But she didn’t want to remind Maddy how deep the division in their family had become.

  “Just think about it? It might not be so bad, you know?”

  “I’ll think about it, Maddy, but don’t—”

  “That’s all I want, Mom. I’m just asking for a little reasonable discourse, is all.”

  “Reasonable discourse? Is that something you heard me or your dad say?”

  “No,” Maddy said. “I can talk. I’m not a baby.”

  “I know it,” Skottie said.

  Maddy peeked at her from under her hood and then looked away. “Mom, don’t look at me like that, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “I mean it.”

  “I know,” Skottie said. “I get it that you’re grown up now and all you want is a little reasonable discourse.”

  She reached out and put her arm around Maddy’s shoulder and was grateful when Maddy let it stay there for the rest of their walk.

  5

  Driving through Paradise Flats, looking for the church, Travis noticed that many of the businesses in town and more than a few community landmarks were named for the Goodman family. A few others, including the 4-H community center, had been founded by people named Meyer. These two families appeared to be the big movers and shakers in the area. He wondered how easy it had been for Kurt Goodman to get himself elected sheriff in a county saturated with members of his own family.

  Purity First was housed in a large stone edifice, one step removed from being a cathedral. By contrast, many of the other churches Travis had seen in the area looked like administration buildings or new brick schoolhouses, complete with American flags dangling over dead yellow lawns. Purity First’s campus gave it the air of something old and steeped in tradition.

  Travis parked on the street and got out. The sun had disappeared again and ominous clouds had begun to roll in. Across from the church was a community garden with a hand-lettered sign that said Free! Take some vegetables! There was a box at the near side of the garden with a slot and another sign asking for donations. Travis took a five-dollar bill from his wallet and dropped it into the slot, then crossed the road and looked up at the church. It was surrounded by a high wooden privacy fence, stained a shade of cedar that matched the anachronistically modern steeple above. Travis was tall enough to see over the fence if he hopped, so he grabbed the top edge and pulled himself up. Inside the compound was a tennis court with lawn chairs set out beside it and a little table with an umbrella that had gathered a big pile of crispy leaves. The net had been taken down for the winter, and a basketball hoop was similarly net-less, waiting for the sun to bring the church youth back outside. Two flags hung limp from a pole outside the church building: an upside-down American flag, and beneath it a plain white field decorated with a stylized wolf’s head. Small prefabricated outbuildings lined the inside of the fence, each big enough to house three riding lawn mowers. Travis caught a whiff of chlorine and assumed there was a swimming pool nearby. He wondered why it hadn’t been drained and covered yet.

  He dropped down and walked around the block, looking for a break in the fence. The wooden privacy fence was succeeded after a few feet by a wrought-iron railing with a locked gate. There were doors behind the gate at either end of a short walkway that ran parallel to the fence. Travis presumed the more modest entrance might lead to a church office, adjacent to the sanctuary. Across from it were big double doors, taller and wider and more ornate, with small stained glass inlays. He walked past the church and kept going to the end of the block. The road curved to the right, and the houses on both sides of the street were connected by the same cedar fence that surrounded the church. Many of the homes had been refurbished with gray aluminum siding and storm windows, giving them a uniform facade despite radically different architectural touches. Some of the homes might have been there for a hundred years or more, unique and dignified, before being slathered over with suburban banality. There was a moving van in front of one house, but there were no movers to be seen, nobody outside. The front door of the house was closed and curtains were drawn over the windows. Travis made note of the address as he passed it: 437.

  Small signs were posted every few feet that said PROPERTY UNDER 24-HOUR VIDEO SURVEILLANCE. Travis waved at one of the signs and kept going. He didn’t see any cameras. A wide alley between the church and the first row of houses was lined with garbage cans and protected by a padlocked gate. The fence was visible here and there, a blank connective tissue, for at least three blocks in every direction, and Travis’s feet were wet and cold by the time he got all the way back around to where his Jeep was parked. He was afraid his boots were ruined.


  It appeared to him that the church had purchased every house and lot nearby and then continued to expand, encroaching on the neighborhood like a virus. A plague of Purity.

  It took Travis twenty seconds to pick the lock on the iron gate. He waited a moment to see if anyone would come out of the church and shoo him away, then he slipped inside and closed the gate behind him. He bypassed the public entrance and went through into the wide courtyard next to the tennis court. There was a path butted up against the church wall, and he walked parallel to it in the grass. The fence was buttressed on the inside surface by thick iron bars bracketed to the wood. A backup generator sat silent, and Travis traced cables from it back to the church. He tried the door of the first small outbuilding he came to, expecting it to be locked, and he was not disappointed. He made his way around to the back of the building and looked through a greasy little window that faced the fence. Inside were two sets of bunk beds, a small table with a hot plate, and a mini-fridge under a shelf that held slim battered paperbacks with titles like Your Enemy Wears a Badge, The Slave Mentality, and Tame the Mongrel. The thin blankets on three of the beds were mussed and stained. Travis glanced through the windows of some of the other sheds without seeing anything different, then walked past a big double garage that looked as new and prefab as the outbuildings and followed the fence around to where the alley led into a small parking lot.

  The only thing that seemed out of place was a dirty white semitrailer truck parked in the far corner of the lot, well hidden by the high fence. There was nothing painted on either side of the trailer, no logo or even an advertisement for the church. There was a half-inch gap between the big doors at the back and a lingering scent of sweat and old food that he hoped wasn’t coming from him. He jiggled the handle, but it was locked. He wondered why anyone would bother locking a truck when it was parked in a secured private lot.

  Tucked away out of sight next to the trailer was an old green Volkswagen minibus with bright red spots scattered across its sides like spattered blood. It looked like something a clown might drive on a dare. Travis cupped his hands and tried to look inside, but the windows were tinted black. He wrote down the license numbers of both vehicles, then crossed the lot back to the church, aware that he was now being observed.

  As he drew near the grand stone building, he could hear voices chanting something unintelligible. They stopped and a man’s voice shouted something, then the voices started up again in response to the man. The sounds were coming from somewhere low to the ground, behind the heavy shrubbery that ringed the foundation. Travis guessed there was a basement conference room hosting a meeting, but he couldn’t tell how many people were down there.

  The double doors opened inward as he reached them.

  “Welcome, friend.” A middle-aged man stood blinking at him from the warmth of the vestibule. His thin blond hair fell across his face, and he held his free arm up as if warding off the outside atmosphere. He was tall and wide and bore a passing resemblance to Sheriff Goodman around the eyes and mouth. But where the sheriff was rough-hewn and tanned, this man was pale and precise in his movements.

  Travis smiled at him. “Is this a bad time?”

  “No, my friend, it’s never a bad time to embrace the Word.” The man stepped back and waved his arm across the threshold. “Did someone leave the gate open?”

  “Apparently so,” Travis said.

  “Well, now you’re here, please come in.”

  Travis stepped inside and wrinkled his nose at the smell. It was a strange mixture of must and body odor, like a high school dance held in a tomb. He stamped his feet on the mat.

  “Seems quiet,” Travis said.

  “It’s Thanksgiving,” the man said. “Happy Thanksgiving.”

  “Today?”

  “Tomorrow. Most of our parishioners have gone home.”

  “This is not their home?” Travis thought of the outbuildings inside the fence and all the bigger houses surrounding the church that fronted the street.

  “In the larger sense it is, but they’ve gone out to spread the Word.”

  “And what is the word?”

  “Welcome,” the man said. “The Word is welcome.”

  “That is usually a good word.”

  “If it falls on the right ears.”

  Travis looked around him. There were pews against two of the walls and a stained glass window that depicted Isaac lying on an altar, his father brandishing a knife above him. “You saw me with your cameras out there?”

  “We have eyes everywhere.”

  Travis nodded, but he didn’t believe the man had been watching the cameras, if there were cameras. If so, he would have come out to greet Travis as soon as he breached the fence. The myth of video surveillance might be nearly as good as actual cameras, yet cheaper and easier to maintain.

  “We must protect everything we are and everything we have from the baser elements of this world,” the man said.

  “And what about the trailer you have out there? Are you protecting whatever is in it?”

  “There’s not much in the trailer,” the man said. “Just some banners, our tents, and some equipment. The valuable stuff is in here.”

  “Protected by more than cameras, I presume.”

  The man shrugged.

  “The sheds?”

  “Our youth group raises money for the church by doing yard work around the town, Dr. Roan.”

  If so, Travis thought, the youth group was forced to pick grass and leaves by hand, since there was no room in those sheds for any lawn equipment. “You know me?”

  “You’re Dr. Travis Roan. I’m Deacon Heinrich Goodman. I’m the director of this place.” His brown shirt was unbuttoned too far down his pale chest.

  “Goodman? The son of Rudy Goodman? The brother of Kurt?”

  “He was once my brother. No more.”

  “No more? What happened?”

  Heinrich Goodman smiled like a snake in a hamster cage. “Would you like to take a quick look around the place?” He walked ahead and Travis tagged along, his hands clasped behind his back. He felt like whistling to ward off evil spirits.

  “You seem like a man of the world, Dr. Roan,” Heinrich said. “I hope our little church doesn’t disappoint you.”

  “I will try not to track any of the outside world on your carpets.”

  Heinrich turned and squinted at him. “Don’t worry about that. We have it cleaned weekly. Every Monday morning, like clockwork.”

  They were in a wood-paneled hallway with plush red carpeting. The walls were lined with portraits of major donors to the church coffers, all of them old white men. Travis recognized one of the faces. The brass plaque under his photograph read JOSEPH ODEK. Travis stopped and sucked air in through his clenched teeth.

  “What’s that?” Heinrich turned back again, a concerned look on his face.

  “Nothing, Mr. Goodman. I suppose I am surprised by how big this place is.”

  “Wait until you see the nave. We spared no expense in renovating it the second time.”

  The final two portraits at the end of the hall were separated from the others and dwarfed them in size. They were mounted in elaborate gold-leaf frames and depicted a pair of middle-aged men in 1970s fashions: wide collars, facial hair, heavy black glasses. Like Odek, each of them was identified by a discreet brass plaque. Travis paused to study the photo of Reverend Rudy Goodman. He had a thick salt-and-pepper beard and his head was bald, but his eyes blazed with righteous authority. The man next to him was named Jacob Meyer. Travis had never heard of him, but he inspected the photo carefully. Meyer projected a different sort of personality. There was something pleasant about his toothy smile, and the laugh lines around his eyes made him look like he had just told a dirty joke, whispered so the nearby wives and kids wouldn’t hear. Travis wondered if one of the two men was a Nazi in hiding. They were both ro
ughly the right age for it.

  Heinrich stopped in front of huge double doors with his hand on the push bar. “Is something wrong?”

  “No,” Travis said. “You mentioned you had to renovate again. Why?”

  “That would have been after the second lightning strike in 2004.”

  “You were struck by lightning twice?”

  “I wasn’t. My father was. The hand of our Lord reached down from the heavens to anoint him.”

  “Reached down through the roof?”

  “What could stop it?”

  “Not the roof, I suppose.”

  “No, sir. When the Lord has something to say, He comes right out and says it.”

  “But only to your father, right?”

  “He’s the chosen one.”

  “Is he still alive, your father?”

  Heinrich nodded gravely. “Yes, but his health has suffered in recent years. His seizures have come back and increased in severity.” He looked away when he said it, and his cheek twitched. Travis hoped for his sake that he didn’t play poker. “I’m afraid he won’t be able to see you.”

  “Pity.”

  Heinrich pushed the doors open, and Travis followed the red carpet through to a cavernous room with exposed rafters high above and purple windows along the walls on either side. There was a wide main aisle leading up to the sanctuary and two narrower aisles on each side, bordered by pews. Travis estimated five hundred people could comfortably sit through a service there—maybe the entire population of Paradise Flats—but at the moment there was only a single figure hunched over in a pew at the front. The church didn’t look quite like anything Travis had seen before. The stained glass windows told a story, from the back of the nave to the front: a man on fire was surrounded by what seemed to be dots of energy, then the man was laying his hands on a wailing woman with a hunchback, and in the third window the woman was in the cloud of dots and had lost her hump. There were more pictures in more windows, but Travis’s eye was drawn to the chancel. There was a podium with track lighting above it and a huge round window in the back wall high above the altar that depicted a thunderstorm in progress. Where he expected to see a cross there was a stylized lightning bolt, bright gold, its wicked tip piercing the altar, its top intersecting with the stained glass tempest above.