21

            Barreling through the night, they traveled east on Interstate 20, away from Atlanta.  Cool air fluted through the punctured front and rear windows, as if the Tahoe had been transformed into a giant wind instrument.

            Anthony didn’t know exactly where they were headed, and wasn’t particularly concerned about it.   All he wanted to do was put distance between them and the maniacs.

            He’d equipped the SUV with an after-market stereo receiver that included a USB input for MP3 players and iPods.  To get Lisa up to speed on everything, he plugged the miniature digital voice recorder into the port and played back his conversation with Bob at The Varsity. 

            The recording was distorted by background noise, and the whistling wind added another annoyance, but when he turned the volume to the highest level, their dialogue was coherent.

            Arms laced over her chest, Lisa listened intently.  At several points, she nodded, or shook her head, frowning. 

            He remained quiet throughout the recording, scanning the road for suspicious vehicles.  Hearing Bob’s voice again, however, made him wonder what had become of the man.  Had the fanatics caught him, or had they lost track of him at the restaurant—and honed in on Anthony as their next best option? 

            The conversation ended with Bob’s last words:  “They’re on to you now, Anthony.  Go home, get your wife, and stay on the move till you find the truth.  Don’t let your dad’s death be in vain . . .” 

            Anthony turned it off.  “Well?”

            “Wow.”  She pulled her fingers through her hair.  “I agree with you—this is for real.  Any doubts I might’ve had after listening to this are nullified by the fact that these people Bob spoke of just tried to kill us.” 

            “Being shot at tends to be pretty convincing.”

            “I still want to know how they found out who you are, where we live.”    

            “They have access to databases, like Bob said.  I think they ran my plates against the DMV computers and pulled up our address.”

            “How the hell is that possible, Tony?  There are privacy laws against that kind of thing.”

            Fire blazed in her eyes.  She’d been taught to believe that the world was an orderly place regulated by laws mostly obeyed by a sensible citizenry.  He’d always found her faith in the system endearing and refreshing, if a bit too idealistic.   

            “They seem to be above the law,” he said. 

            “No one is above the law.”

            “They were shooting at us as if they were on their own private firing range, not in the middle of a residential neighborhood, Lisa.  Whoever they are, they obviously aren’t worried about getting arrested.”

            “We should call the police.”

            “No way.”

            “Why the hell not?”  She was nearly shouting.

            He kept his tone calm.  “Think about it.  If these people are operating without fear of the cops, it’s because they have influence over law enforcement, which is something Bob said, too, remember?”

            “They can’t control every cop for God’s sake, as if all the officers are a bunch of mindless robots.”

            “Maybe not.  Maybe they manipulate only the big-wig commanders who call the shots.  Either way, we can’t take the risk.  We call them, and they could be on our asses like white on rice in a hot minute.”

            “You’re being overly paranoid.”

            “No, I’m being overly realistic.”

            She glowered at him, sighed, looked away out the window.

            “We’re on our own,” he said.  “Thing is, baby, we’ve always been on our own.”

            “What?” She swiveled to face him.

            “The system you love and trust, the laws you studied in school, this high-tech society we think is so great—they’re broken, ‘cause they’re products of people, and people are broken.”

            “Don’t be ridiculous.  I’m not broken.  You aren’t.”

            “We all are, in different ways.  We’ve all got chips and fractures in us, like pieces of old china at a garage sale.  Broken.”          

            “You have this incredibly pessimistic opinion of people, Tony, and I can’t buy into that.  I won’t.  Most people are good and want to do the right thing.”

            “Please.  Most people are too self-absorbed to care about doing the right thing.  Sure, we talk about it a lot, and every now and then we’re moved to stand up for a cause bigger than ourselves, but for the most part, all we want is our own little comfortable island, and we don’t give a damn about what happens beyond it.  All of us are guilty of that, Lisa—we’re guilty of apathy and self-absorption, and that’s why the system fails us, that’s why it always will.”

            She stared at him.  “Is your name Anthony, or Ghost?”

            He stopped himself—he hadn’t intended to launch into a rant.  Until then, he’d used his writing as a vehicle to vent his deepest emotions and beliefs about this stuff.  When questioned, as he often was by readers and media, whether he actually believed in the things his characters said and did, he offered up the indifferent response, Hey, lighten up, it’s only fiction.  That means I make these things up.

            As Lisa studied him as though seeing him anew, he felt too exposed.

            “Anyway,” he said, “no cops.  Okay?”

            “You’re so stubborn.”  She shrugged.  “But fine, no cops.”

            It was a few minutes past midnight.  Highway traffic was sparse, but those on the road were roaring past at speeds in excess of eighty miles an hour, typical Atlanta drivers who drove with death wishes. 

            He kept to the far right lane and maintained his speed at a relatively modest seventy.  With the damaged windows and a presumably shattered taillight, he didn’t want to risk attracting the attention of a cop and be put in the position of explaining what had happened. 

            From between the front seats, Lisa picked up the Bible that Bob had left him, riffled through it.  “Back to Bob.  Why did he leave you this?”  

            “We’re assuming he left it for me.”

            “And who the heck is Kelley Marrow?”

            “Who?”

            “The Bible belongs to her, according to this.”  She tapped the first page.

            “Oh, that.  I’ve no idea who she is.  But remember, Bob enjoys giving clues through the scriptures.  He’s done it twice so far.  I figure it has to have something useful in it.”

            “There’re probably hundreds of passages highlighted in here.”  She ran her finger along some of the verses marked with the multi-colored pens.  She snapped the book shut.  “I’m way too frazzled to read this right now.”

            “We can check it out later.”

            “Furthermore, if he’s accumulated evidence that he claims can destroy this organization and bring your dad’s killer to justice, why not give it to you directly, or at least tell you where it is?”

            “He might be worried about the security of the information, decided to hide it within a bunch of clues.”

            “Possibly.”  She yawned, but cut the yawn short as if angry at her body slowing down on her when she was finally getting into a groove.  “Let’s work from the bottom up, then.  What religious organization do you think these people represent?”

            “A cult, but one more mainstream than your average bunch of isolated fanatics.  They’ve got deep resources, as we’ve seen, probably lots of money backing them.”

            “The Roman Catholic Church is the largest religious organization in the world,” she said.  “But I really don’t think Bob was talking about them.  This group sounds smaller than that.”

            “But big enough to pose a real threat.”   

            “Bob said your dad tried to bring them down, and that’s why they got him.  That doesn’t make any sense to me.  Your dad was a sports writer, Tony.  What could he have done?”

            “Maybe he got wind of a damaging story about these people, started to dig deeper, and they found out.”

            “Does that sound like him?”

            “Not really.  He loved his job, but he wasn’t obsessed about it.  I can’t imagine him risking his life to write some kind of expose in a subject area that wasn’t even his beat.” 

            “But it’s possible.”

            “At this stage, anything’s possible, don’t you think?”

            “What church did he attend?”          she asked.

            “Greater Hope Baptist.  In Decatur.  All of us went every Sunday.  It was a small church, had maybe three hundred members, everyone knew each other.”

            “Sounds like our church,” she said. 

            He considered the small United Methodist church of which she spoke to be hers, not his.  He hadn’t visited the church since their wedding ceremony three years ago.  But Lisa and her family were longtime members and rarely missed a Sunday service.   

            “They’re similar, I guess,” he said.

            “Small, family churches don’t have teams of assassins on call, though.”

            “We’re clearly talking about a larger group here,” he said.  “Aren’t there a lot of big churches here in Atlanta?  Megachurches, or whatever they’re called?”

            “There sure are.  I don’t even know where to start.”  She sifted both hands through her hair, a familiar sign that she was exhausted, and she yawned again, too.  “Damn.  I feel jumpy and totally wiped out at the same time.  But you look as if it’s only another day at the office.”

            “Not how I feel, though,” he said.  He added: “I feel like our island has been invaded.”

            “Our own little comfortable island, where we don’t give a damn about what happens beyond it,” she said, repeating a sentence from his tirade.

            “It’s pretty late, Lisa.  Why don’t you let back the seat and relax?”

            “I can’t relax when every time I look up, I see a bullet hole in the windshield.”

            “Point taken.”  He unclipped his iPhone from his belt.  “I think it’s time we find somewhere to crash for a while.”

            “Who’re you calling?”

            “The only guy I can call this late: Mike Alfaro.”