Titus had given himself Second Corinthian and the Holy Rock of the Redeemer to investigate. They were the last two churches that had used that inflammatory phrase on their signs. Second Corinthian was led by Reverend Calhoun Wilkes. He stayed in a rectory near the church, a simple one-story brick house encircled by ancient pink crepe myrtles, with a brick walkway that bisected the circle as it snaked out to the driveway, where he parked his equally ancient Volvo sedan.
Titus parked next to the sedan and knocked on the door of the rectory. A slim man with a long gray beard and wearing a white button-down shirt and a fluffy brown cardigan answered the door.
“Sheriff Crown, come in, please,” Reverend Wilkes said. Titus ducked his head as he stepped through the doorway. Reverend Wilkes gestured for him to sit in an old but well-cared-for Queen Anne chair while the reverend sat in a recliner. The coffee table between them had a small silver tray with a teacup, a bowl of sugar, and a silver teakettle.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Sheriff?” Reverend Wilkes asked.
“No, thank you. I just want to ask you—”
“How are you, Sheriff? This terrible thing with Mr. Spearman and that young man must be just a horrible thing for you to deal with,” Reverend Wilkes said.
“It is, but it’s part of the job. Just not the part I like,” Titus said.
“You know, usually where there is a tragedy in life, I find solace in the Word. I’m able to compartmentalize the situation as a part of the Master’s plan. And His understanding is not my understanding. This situation with Jeff Spearman has tested my obedience and my resolve. I keep thinking, how did Jeff allow the devil to enter his heart to such an extent?”
Titus cleared his throat. “Reverend, do you really think a fallen angel took over Jeff Spearman’s body and made him kill those kids?” Titus asked.
Reverend Wilkes poured hot water from the teakettle into his cup. He dumped a teaspoon of sugar into the cup and stirred his tea. He took a sip, closed his eyes, then took another sip. He placed the cup on a coaster and then leaned forward and stared into Titus’s face.
“Is it easier to accept that a man who this county trusted with their children for over thirty years was a sociopath and a charlatan who had visited his unnatural desires on those he was supposed to protect? The devil takes many forms, Sheriff. A snake, an angel with flaming wings, madness. You don’t believe in the devil, Sheriff?” Reverend Wilkes asked.
Titus placed his hat on his knee and cocked his head to the right.
“Reverend, if you’ve seen the things I have, you’d realize the devil is just the name we give to the terrible things we do to each other,” Titus said.
“That’s a rather dim view of humanity, Sheriff.”
“From where I sit, that’s the only view that makes sense, Reverend,” Titus said.
Reverend Wilkes nodded slowly. “I can’t imagine what you’ve seen, Sheriff. But I’ll keep you in my prayers,” he said.
Titus ignored the minister’s supplication on his behalf and asked the question that had brought him there.
“Reverend, the reason I came by was to ask you about a phrase that was on the church sign last year. It was, ‘Our salvation is his suffering.’ I wanted to ask who was it that came up with that phrase and who suggested putting it on the sign.” He zeroed in on Reverend Wilkes’s face. He let his eyes take in the minister’s movements, his posture, the way he gently pulled at his beard. Titus was trying to read the cryptic language of his involuntary gesticulations.
“Well, as I recall, it was Miss Maggie Scott who suggested we put that phrase up on the sign.”
“Do you have her number?” Titus asked.
“Oh, Miss Maggie died earlier this year,” Wilkes said. Titus leaned back in his chair. “Sheriff, why are you investigating a church sign, if you don’t mind me asking?”
Titus stood. “Just chasing phantoms, I guess, Reverend. Thank you for your time.”
“Of course. Is there anything else I can do for you?” Wilkes said.
“Just one more thing. Has there been anyone in your congregation who seems a bit … off? Anyone acting strange since the shooting at the school?”
“Nothing comes to mind, Sheriff. Anything else I can help you with?” Wilkes said.
“No, Reverend. I guess I’ll get going,” Titus said. He put on his hat and headed for the door.
“Sheriff, I asked you earlier, but you didn’t respond. Would you mind if I included you in my prayers tonight?” Reverend Wilkes asked.
Titus paused. “I don’t mind, but maybe you should pray for someone that believes, Reverend.”
“God loves the believer and the nonbeliever all the same.”
Yeah, but I don’t love him back. I left that abusive relationship a long time ago, Titus thought. “Have a good evening, Reverend,” he said.
* * *
Titus drove out to the edge of the county and past the county square toward Piney Island. The pine trees gradually gave way to huge mounds of pampa grass and wild irises and cattails that shot up from the marshland like the quills of a porcupine. Titus cracked his window and let the salt-tinged air slip in and kiss him on the lips. He crossed the Piney Island bridge with the slightest frog in his throat. The rusty metal plating on the old bridge looked like it had been washed in ocher. The aged iron creaked and whined under the weight of the SUV like an old man getting up off the floor.
Titus had joined a small contingent of citizens at a recent supervisor’s meeting who literally begged the board to replace the Piney Island bridge. The request was denied four-to-two. Most people in the county hardly considered Piney Island a part of Charon, and those who did didn’t seem to understand the severity of the situation with the bridge. Titus hoped it wouldn’t happen, but he was beginning to think the only way people would ever understand was if the forty-foot-long structure fell into the Chesapeake.
The Holy Rock of the Redeemer sat at the far western point of the wide exclamation point that was Piney Island. Past a bend in the gravel road sharp enough to slice bread, then down a long stretch bordered by wild unkempt yucca plants that led right up to the narrow parking lot that ran the length of the wooden church. Beyond the church lay the Chesapeake Bay, and in the bay lay the abandoned Old Piney Point lighthouse. When he was a child, he and his friends would try to scare each other with stories of the haunted Old Piney Point Lighthouse and the two lighthouse keepers who went crazy in the 1920s.
Titus parked near the front door of the church next to a tan late-model Chevrolet Celebrity, a car that Titus was sure had ceased being produced more than fifteen years ago. He went up the well-worn wooden steps and knocked on the door. Most churches in the county were only open on Sunday or for special occasions, but Titus knew Pastor Elias Hillington, the pastor of Holy Rock since Titus could remember, lived at the church with his wife, their eight children (most of whom had moved out of the county after reaching adulthood), and a collection of snakes. Most of the parishioners who made up the congregation of Holy Rock were Hillingtons and Crenshaws, from Elias’s side of the family tree, and Rollinses and DeButtes, from his wife Mare-Beth’s side.
To Titus’s knowledge, the entire congregation, like most of the population of Piney Island, was white. They were watermen who toiled on the bay and sold the bounty they pulled kicking and screaming from the ocean to the Cunningham Seafood processing plant. Rawboned men and women with faces weathered and toughened by years of cold winds coming off the water at five o’clock in the morning. Titus’s father had worked side by side with these men and women for decades and yet was always separate from them. An outsider on this island even though his family went back over one hundred years in Charon proper.
Anyone who didn’t take their first steps along the oyster-lined shores of Piney Island or take their first sip of Communion wine in Holy Rock would always be an outsider here.
Titus banged on the door with an enormous brass knocker in the shape of two hands clasped together. He listened as the echoes reverberated through the church and made their way through the sanctuary. After a few minutes he heard steps coming toward the front door.