My latest writing effort is done. I'm going to start searching for an agent tomorrow. I'm hoping this one will be easier to explain. Here are the first couple of sections, call it an appetizer. If I don't find an agent right quick I'm going to go lulu.com and do it myself.
Ed swore as he reached for the phone.
"Don't answer that," Karen, his wife said helpfully, "dinner is done."
Unfortunately, the tone (reveille) identified the caller before he even answered it, which Karen knew.
"Hi Dave."
Dave Simon was a senior detective with the King County Sheriff's office.
"Ed I hate to call you in the middle of the night..."
Ed glanced at the clock on the wall, seven forty-five was the middle of the night?
"It isn't that late."
"Well its dark out and I need your help. It's only a couple of miles from your house."
"Shoot."
"Sixteen year old girl found dead at a 'Wordie' church. My people are there, it sounds gruesome, and the people there are already complaining about police misconduct. An independent observer might help us out."
"Ok, but I'm your white collar crime consultant, I don't do murders. And I don't know beans about their religion, or any other for that matter."
"Just help me out here."
"Sure. You must be in bad shape when you need a crusty SOB like me to help with your people skills."
Ed jotted down the address as Dave gave it to him.
"Hon, I have to go. Can you hold dinner?"
"Already working on it. I knew you'd have to go some where."
“Sorry, not a great way to spend Friday night.”
Ed's car was in the driveway. Karen had dibs on the available space in the two-car garage. The ground was damp, but the light Seattle rain had stopped. A multi-colored glow lit the darkness, a few yards away Jack Thornton and his son were stringing Christmas lights all over their house.
"Sure getting into the Christmas spirit," Ed mumbled to himself as he backed out of the driveway. He didn't know much about Thornton, the family had only been there a few months. They seemed to keep to themselves.
Ed started to review what he knew about 'Wordies,' Disciples of the Word of God Foundation. Their headquarters was on the south end of Lake Union, just north of downtown Seattle. They were some sort of Fundie sect that thought everybody should believe what they believed, or at least they spent all their time annoying potential converts. They claimed worldwide membership although he did not know the numbers.
Ed shrugged as he drove through quiet residential areas. That was everything he knew about Wordies.
If the small parking lot had not been full of police cars with flashing lights he would have driven right past the nondescript building while he looked for a church. This did not look like a church. It was a simple, unadorned wooden structure. The long side of the building faced the street, the parking lot there provided space for perhaps a dozen cars.
More parking was visible in the light spilling out of the open door on the left side of the structure. It looked like the lot wrapped around the back of the building. A painted sign on the front of the building announced that it was the North Seattle Gathering House of Disciples of The Word. Below that, the sign listed days and times for various "gatherings."
Beyond the building lights flashed and roar of traffic from I-5 filled the air. There was nothing but chain link fence between the back parking lot and the freeway.
Ed parked and walked to the small porch and stairs on the short side of the building, flashing ID at the officers as he approached them.
"Hey Ed, we heard you were coming," one of them called out.
"Hi Steve, are you the scene commander?"
"Yeah. Come on in. I need some help here."
Normally Steve Jenkins was talkative, tonight he said nothing as the two men went into the building.
They stepped into a sort of vestibule, a door on the left lead to a small office area, to the right Ed saw an open area to hang coats with restroom doors on either side. The two men walked through the vestibule toward the main part of the building, a small auditorium that might hold one hundred and fifty people. The padded chairs formed neat rows facing a platform a short step higher than the floor. A simple podium sat in the exact middle of the platform.
"Where is..."
Ed's voice trailed off as he stepped into the auditorium.
The girl's body lay crumpled in the center aisle that ran through the rows of chairs from the vestibule to the stage. Blonde air with blue streaks streamed away from her nearly severed head, which lay at an odd angle in a pool of blood soaked into the carpet. Splatters of blood lay sprayed on several rows of chair.
Ed looked up. More splatters streaked the ceiling. The copper smell of blood hung in the air.
"Who found the body?"
Steve waved toward several men gathered to the side, in an open area behind the last row of seats on the right side of the room.
"They did."
Ed looked them over. They were as nondescript as the building, four middle-aged white guys, and a younger Hispanic man. All of them wearing inexpensive off the rack suits, and packing nearly identical briefcases. For all the world, they looked like marginally successful used car salesmen.
They were pale, sweating, obviously frightened. Ed couldn't blame them. It was a horrible scene.
"So what happened here?"
2
A light rain was falling as Josh DelRio parked his car in front of the Gathering House, making a wide turn into the space nearest the door, as there was no curb or walkway separating the lot from the street. No one else was there yet, the only light came from a street light at the end of the block fifty feet away, and the cars roaring past on I-5. The evening commute was nearly over and traffic was almost at full speed.
Josh (he had given up making anybody call him by his real name, Jose) reached into the back seat and pulled out a heavy briefcase. He was recently promoted from assistant Servant to full Servant, a position of real authority in the Gathering.
He took his new responsibility seriously. This was his first time dealing with the matter of some one who had been Cast Out, removed from the Gatherings roll of Disciples for misconduct. He was a few minutes early, he wanted to review the notes from the three Servant review committee that had initiated the discipline.
He had already looked over his copy of the file several times. But this was not going to be easy. Alice Horton had been Cast Out for nearly a year, all Disciples had been required to end all interaction with her. Now her father thought she was repentant and deserved readmission. Until his daughter had been Cast Out after being arrested, drunk and naked in a house with about half the boys in her high school class; Tom Horton had been the Senior Servant.
In theory, a Gathering of Disciples was lead by a team of Servants. In practicality, the Senior Servant could rule the one or two hundred Disciples in his care with an Iron fist. And, as one of the other Servants had remarked, Tom ran the North Seattle Gathering like it was North Korea. He was not going to be easy to deal with if he did not get his way.
And Josh could see no evidence that Alice Horton wanted to be a Disciple of any sort, let alone a good one. Absent some effort on her part to demonstrate a change of heart, her status would not change.
Josh sighed, picked up the bag, and got out of the car. He stepped to the door of the Gathering House and opened it. To his surprise, the lights were on. Since the small auditorium had no windows, he would not have expected to see the lights. However, they should not have been on. Perhaps one of the other Servants had arrived early, and then gone to get coffee in anticipation of a long night.
Josh walked through the vestibule, his nose wrinkling at an odd smell. Then he saw the body. And the blood. For a second he thought that perhaps the House had been vandalized, some one playing a joke. Then it hit him like a hammer blow.
This was real.
He dropped the briefcase on the floor, clapped his hand over his mouth, and ran for the door. He pushed aside the door, which was still ajar, ran to the metal railing at the far side of the porch and vomited into the parking lot.
“Josh, are you all right?”
Josh turned to see John Tebeaux coming up the stairs. Josh waved his arms helplessly, in the direction of the open door. He tried for a second to talk, to tell John that something was dreadfully wrong inside the house. He found that he could not talk.
“What is it?” John sound frantic. Clearly, something was wrong. He glanced through the door and saw a bloody leg protruding into the central aisle.
“Oh My Lord,” he exclaimed, inadvertently speaking irreverently, “what is that?”
###
Ed glanced up from his note pad.
“Yes, I wrote down ‘inadvertently.’ I take it that is important to you?”
“Well yes,” John stammered, “taking the Lord’s name in vain is a serious matter.”
Ed shook his head as if to clear cobwebs. The mutilated body of sixteen-year-old girl lay on the floor ten feet away and this moron was worried about his language.
“Continue.”
###
The two men stood on the porch, shaking and gasping for air. John had gone in long enough to verify that it was, in fact a real body.
“What do we do?” Josh asked, seeking guidance from the older man.
John shook his head, not really comprehending his situation.
“I don’t know,” he said dully.
“George should be here in a minute or two.”
Seconds later the lights of another car spun across the parking area as a car pulled into the lot. George Pearsall, the last of the three Servants summoned to the meeting stepped out of the car. It took him a minute to sort out the hysterical yelling from the other two.
Then he made a decision as to what to do.
“We need to call Carl.”
###
“Who’s Carl?” Ed asked.
“I am,” one of the men spoke up, “I am the Senior Servant for the Gathering.”
Ed looked him over. His suit was rumpled, and he had a determined look on his face, as if his job was to get an annoying problem out of the way so that he could get back to his business.
Ed looked at the group of men for a moment.
“Why not call the police?”
After a couple of seconds of silence, Carl answered.
“We were following our normal procedure. Our responsibility is to the Word of God. The Lord Almighty directs us. We do not answer to Outsiders.”
Steve stepped up and touched Ed’s arm, nodding toward the vestibule.