Costume Not Included (25 page)

  Joshua twitched his shoulders as if the question wasn't worth a full shrug. "What they should do?"

  "Into the camera! Talk to them directly!"

  The prophet looked into the lens. "Our friend, here, the, um, precursor, wants me to tell you what the Lord wants you to do." He raised a finger and shook it with emphasis. "That hasn't changed since I was here last." He spread his calloused hands. "Be good to one another.

  "An old rabbi used to put it very well: don't do anything to anybody that you wouldn't want somebody to do to you. And, if you can see a way to help, then help. After all, what are we here for, if not to help each other?"

  He gave the matter a little more thought then his face brightened. "Oh, yes," he said, "and don't worry about what it all means. Even the Lord doesn't know that. At least, not yet. He's still working it out. Or, I should say, we're working it out for him. We're all part of a story that the Lord is telling himself."

  "Well," the prophet rubbed his palms together then spread his hands, "nice talking to you. Peace."

  And with that, Joshua Josephson, gave the camera a little flick of his becurled, bearded head, and walked off into the darkness. The robotic spotlight and camera followed him until he stepped over the strip of yellow tape that marked the limit of the coverage zone, then faithful to their programming, the light turned itself off and the camera went on standby.

  Leaving Billy Lee Hardacre with fifty-three minutes of airtime to fill. In the automated broadcast center, Billy Lee was his own director; he had a device in his pocket with a miniature screen and keyboard. He pulled it out and quickly tapped in a sequence of numbers, and the screen showed an image of himself pitching for donations. A second later, so did all the television sets in the land that were tuned to his program.

  Then he went looking for the prophet.

 

Captain Denby didn't know how it was done, but the time traveler had told him that if he signed out a police vehicle – any vehicle that had a global positioning system – he would find the coordinates of Cathy Bannister's grave already entered in it. Sure enough, when he got behind the wheel of an unmarked car in the police garage and turned on the GPS, it told him where to go. Lieutenant Grimshaw and three crime-scene technicians in a van full of technology followed him.

  It took longer to get there than it had on the floating disk, but eventually the woman's voice from the dashboard brought him to the pipe gate that had been open that night in 2001. It was closed now but one of the technicians clipped off the padlock with a pair of bolt cutters, then the two vehicles wound their way along the rutted track that led through the trees.

  The night before, he'd mentally marked the spot under the maple where they'd laid the body. The tree did not look much different after nine years and he led Grimshaw there and pointed to the ground. The lieutenant, beckoned over a technician who brought a five-foot-long steel rod with a tee-bar handle. The technician pushed the rod into the ground in several places, a foot apart. Denby could see that where the grave ought to be, the instrument went in deeper without the man having to put weight on it. In less than a minute, the rough dimensions of the grave were marked out by tiny white flags mounted on sticks stuck into the ground.

  "Definitely been dug into," Grimshaw said. Another of the technicians, a woman, brought him a handheld device covered in black rubber; it had a long metal tube attached to it by a plastic cable. The lieutenant inserted the tube into one of the holes the first probe had made, within the area bounded by the flags on sticks. Grimshaw pressed a button and studied a display for a moment, then he withdrew the probe and put it into one of the holes outside the flagged area. He studied the result for a moment, then said, "Higher methane results inside than outside. I'd say we've got a grave."

  He turned to Denby and said, "Captain, I'm going to ask you to step back." Then he spoke to his crew. "Done right," he said, "this one's a career-maker. Done wrong – that means we fuck up and blow a conviction – it could be a career-ender. So we're not only going to do this right – we're going to do it perfect. Karen, get the camera. It's been nine years, but we'll start with a complete site survey. Let's get to work."

• • • •

Hardacre had found two bucket chairs and a small table, and set them up, siting them on strips of tape laid on the floor by another televangelist who used the studio and liked to do an interview format. Then he'd gone and found Joshua, who was wandering around the studio exercising his curiosity, and brought him back. They were both already wearing button microphones and FM radio packs, so all the preacher had to do was get them seated, find the right item on his control's drop-down menu, and let the computer up in the control booth adapt the lighting and camera positioning to the new set-up. He'd had to run another commercial while a second camera rolled forward from the back of the studio, but that gave him to time to explain to the prophet what they were going to do.

  Joshua scratched his black curls. "We're going to talk while they eavesdrop?"

  "Pretty much."

  "That seems like bad manners."

  "Not here."

  "As you say." The prophet leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs.

  "Better if you keep both feet on the floor," Hardacre said. "Sandals without socks give the wrong impression."

  "What impression is that?"

  But the preacher was looking into one of the cameras and saying, "And we're back. I'm talking with Joshua Josephson, prophet of the Lord. Joshua–"

  "Yes?" The man craned his neck to see the camera that had positioned itself behind him so it could shoot Hardacre over his shoulder.

  "This one," Hardacre said, gesturing with his thumb at the camera behind his chair.

  "That one?" The prophet peered into the lens. "But I was talking to the other one before."

  Hardacre took a breath and let it out slowly. "That doesn't matter. Or you can just look at me."

  "It's a complicated business, isn't it?"

  The preacher took another breath. "Earlier, you were saying that God–"

  "Don't say that," Joshua interrupted. "He likes to be called 'the Lord.'" He smiled, like a man remembering an embarrassing faux pas. "I used to call him 'Father,' you know, but that led to some complications." He laughed. "Especially with the Greeks. You wouldn't think they would have taken me literally, but there you go."

  Hardacre opened his mouth for a second try, but the prophet was shaking his head and saying, "I never wanted to include the Greeks. Or the Romans. Waste of time, I thought, talking to pagans. Even if they'd come around to what I was saying, I figured the best they'd do is make the Lord into just another one of their gods – they had a lot of gods, you know. All false, of course, but could you convince them of that?"

  He shook his head again and Hardacre used the opportunity to say, "But your message to–"

  "And then, as it all turned out, I have to say I was mostly right. Even when Constantine made them all convert, they kept a lot of those godlings – started calling them saints and so on, and just kept on burning incense to them and asking for favors and all that pagan hoo-hah."

  "But–" Hardacre began and was rolled over.

  "And you should have seen the trouble that caused in Heaven," Joshua said. "First, all of the pagan gods and demigods were demons." He had been speaking to the preacher, but now he stared over Hardacre's shoulder into the camera and said, "That is, they were fallen angels. Do they know about that business with Lucifer?" he said to Billy Lee.

  "Yes. Now let's–"

  "Good. So here were all these formerly fallen angels coming back and being rehabilitated as saints. Which meant they had privileged access to the Lord. Seats on the right hand. I don't want to say there was resentment among the Thrones and Dominions – not to mention the real human saints who had been martyred by the Romans – but, well, let's say there had to be a period of adjustment."

  Joshua blinked and smiled at Billy Lee. "But listen to me," he said, "prattling on and on. What was it you wanted to talk about?"

 

The ground search turned up the usual odds and ends, almost certainly unrelated to the body in the hole, Grimshaw conceded, but they were doing this one "absolutely by the book." Things got more interesting when the technicians got down to the bones themselves. Karen, smallest of the three, lowered herself into the grave and began brushing away the last bits of soil from the bones, pausing every few strokes to let one of the male technicians capture the scene on a digital camera.

  "Here," said the woman, straightening from a crouch and handing Grimshaw a plastic evidence bag. In it was a gold ring set with garnets, Cathy Bannister's birthstone. Her father had given it to her at her high-school graduation. It was known to have disappeared when she did. The lieutenant examined it then said to Denby, "Captain, do you have the file?"

  It was in Denby's car. He went and got it. Grimshaw followed him. They opened the folder on the vehicle's hood and the captain riffled through the material until he came to a picture of the high school girl smiling in cap and gown. The hand that held a rolled-up diploma also showed the ring.

  "Bingo," said the lieutenant. "We'll still do the DNA, but…"

  "You're convinced?" Denby said.

  "Uh huh."

  "Time to call the chief." The detective took out his cell phone, checked the display and saw three green bars. He called up the speed dial menu and punched in a number. The phone rang several times – he could envision J. Edgar Hoople staring at the caller ID and trying to decide whether or not to answer – then the chief's voice said, "What?"

  "Are you sitting down, chief?" the captain said.

  "Don't fuck with me, Denby!"

  "Thought you'd want to know. I'm out in the state forest, off County Road Eight. Grimshaw and his team are with me. We've just dug up Cathy Bannister." At first, Denby thought he was hearing silence on the line, that the chief had disconnected, but when he pressed the phone closer to his ear, he could hear the sound of breathing.

  "You there, chief?" he said. "Do you want to call Public Affairs and set up the press conference? Or do you want me to?"

 

Chesney and Melda watched
The New New Tabernacle of the Air
in their apartment.

  "I don't think this is what Billy Lee had in mind," she said.

  It sounded pretty interesting to Chesney. "Eyewitness reports from Heaven aren't all that common."

  "Yeah, but I think the rev was expecting revelations, real straight-from-the-mind-of-God stuff. Not gossip and platty-whatsits."

  "Platitudes," Chesney said. "I guess he was expecting some kind of big change, all in the twinkling of an eye."

  He turned back to the screen. Obviously, chairs that swiveled were a new experience to the prophet. He was swinging from side to side, and now he did a complete rotation.

  "But what about the end of the world?" Hardacre was saying.

  Joshua quit swinging and made a
what can I tell you?
face. "It doesn't end, does it? The author just starts a new scroll–"

  "Chapter," said Hardacre.

  "Starts a new chapter, and keeps on going."

  "So what do you say to all those people who think it's all going to wrap up soon, and they'll be transported straight to Heaven?"

  The bearded man thought for a moment. "I heard an expression on the far-seer thing the other day. One person said to another, 'Get over yourself.' I think that's what I'd say to the people who think they're the heroes of the story." He smiled reassuringly into the camera. "I mean, look at how it has developed. It all started off very simple, just two teenagers in a garden with some animals. That didn't work, but he didn't stop there, did he? He added in more people, more places, more situations."

  The prophet swung around in another full circle. "Now he wants to try getting the characters consciously involved in the story. Who knows where that's going to lead?" He bit his lower lip, the beard jutting as he did so, then said, "Besides, once the story ends for good, that will be the end of Heaven, too."

  "What are you saying?"

  "Heaven's just part of the story," Joshua said. "The same as Hell is. When he's done, they're done."

  "But what about the angels and demons," Hardacre said, "the righteous and the damned? Where do they all go?"

  The prophet shrugged. "Back where they came from, I suppose. I certainly don't know. You're the one who figured it all out."

 

Chesney switched over to the news channel, saw a breaking news announcement. A woman in a red suit with brunette hair that looked as if it had been lacquered solid was standing in front of Police Central, saying, "… conference expected soon, but the word around here is that there has been a significant break in the nine yearold mystery surrounding the disappearance of Cathy Bannister."

  "What kind of break, Angela?" said the weekend fillin anchor back at the studio.

  Angela began to answer, but just then a black Lincoln Town Car slid to the curb behind her. Out of the back seat stepped the chief of police. The woman in red rushed to push a microphone under J. Edgar Hoople's nose, and so did a whole gaggle of other well-coiffed and polished TV reporters, plus a few print and radio newsies who looked as if they had slept in their clothes, and probably had.

  "Do you expect an imminent arrest?" Angela asked, walking backwards as the chief thrust toward the front steps. "Has a body been recovered?" said someone else.

  Hoople grunted something his hand jerked up spasmodically. Angela ducked back as if she expected a blow, but the police chief was only signaling to a uniformed lieutenant at the top of the steps – the public affairs careerist whose office Captain Denby had commandeered – to get down into the scrum and rescue him. The PR officer shouldered his way into the press, then turned and ran interference for the chief until Hoople disappeared through Police Central's front doors.