Raising Cain (2 page)

This was Gardner Lawson’s world: a daily diet of mayhem and sorrow. As the chief prosecutor in a remote western Maryland county,
Gardner had seen a lot of Tom Payson cases. Too many to count. At forty-five years of age, he was beginning to tire. He’d
been prosecuting crime for two decades. He was tall and imposing, a courtroom wizard. But he was running out of steam.

Buzzz
… The pager on Gardner’s belt vibrated against his abdomen. Gardner sat forward, rubbed his dark eyes, and brushed a wisp
of graying hair behind his ear.

Buzzz
…

He removed the pager and squinted at the number display, adjusting the distance so he could read it: 777-3454. Carole. His
ex-wife. There was a second readout after the number: 911. Emergency.

Gardner grabbed for the phone. A 911 from Carole could only be about one thing: Granville. His son was in trouble.

He fumbled with the buttons, misdialed, and redialed. The phone rang.

“Hello?” It was the voice of an eleven-year-old.

“Gran?” Gardner’s heart was racing.

“Dad!”

You okay?”

“Yeah. I just paged you.”

“I
know
. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

“
Nothing
? You paged me with a nine-one-one. That means emergency.”

“It is an emergency.”

Gardner sighed. He’d delivered the “never cry wolf” sermon a hundred times. “What’s the matter?”

“I have a spelling test tomorrow.”

Gardner fought a smile. For a spunky sixth-grader, that was an emergency. “Did you ask Mom for help?”

“She’s not here. She’s over at Aunt Vera’s.”

Gardner felt a rush of heat under his collar. Granville should not be left alone. He was still too young. “When’s she coming
back?”

“Hour or so.”

“What about your dinner?”

“She’s gonna bring a pizza.”

Gardner firmed his jaw. There were a million ways Carole irritated him, but he was not supposed to let it show, not in front
of his son.

“Can you help me, Dad?”

Gardner checked his watch. They were well on the downside of six o’clock, and Jennifer was expecting him back at the State’s
Attorney’s office soon.

“Can you, Dad?”

“Of course,” Gardner finally said. “Read me the list, and we’ll go through it.”

Granville ticked off twenty words, and Gardner copied them down. “Okay, ready?”

“Yup.”

“Turn your book facedown.”

“It’s closed.”

“Okay. Here we go….”

For the next half hour, Gardner quizzed Granville on the spelling of
passage,
and
parrot,
and
potato,
and the other words on the list. Suddenly there was a voice in the background.

“Mom’s here,” Granville whispered. “Got to hang up.”

“Okay,” Gardner whispered back. “Good luck on the test. And Gran…”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Go easy on the nine-one-one. Remember the wolf boy.”

Granville laughed.

“Love you son, love you very much. See you soon, I hope.”

“Love you, too, Dad.” And he hung up.

Gardner stared at the phone for a moment. Then he stood up and stretched. His leg was cramped, and his lower back ached. He
was getting
old
. He massaged his calf, but the pain didn’t go away. The muscles were sore from too much jogging on the old wheels.

Gardner walked to the lieutenant’s office and placed Tom Payson’s gun and report on his desk. Then he half-timed it down the
hall, past the security post, and out of the station. The workday was finally done. And Jennifer was waiting.

Assistant State’s Attorney Jennifer Munday looked at the woman sitting across the conference room table. Her left eye was
puffed up with a bruise, her lip was cracked, and a grimy tear streamed down her cheek. She was gripping her hands so tightly
her knuckles were white.

“It’s all right,” Jennifer said softly. “He’s never going to hurt you again.”

The woman stared blankly.

“We’re going to nail him,” Jennifer said firmly. She was a terminator in court, a lithe, brown-haired dynamo in round-lensed
glasses. “If you testify, he’ll be locked up for a long time.”

The woman released her grip slightly.

Oh no, Jennifer thought, don’t waffle on me.

The woman shook her head. “Can’t,” she moaned.

Jennifer touched her arm. “You
must
, Cathy. Without your testimony we have no case. I explained that. You have to tell the judge what happened.”

“Can’t,” Cathy repeated.

“I know you’re afraid—”

“That ain’t it.”

“What is it?”

“I still
love
him.”

Jennifer tried to stay cool. She’d played this scene fifty times before. “Love” was an abuser’s best defense. “You
have
to do this,” Jennifer said. “You have to. For yourself. I know it’s hard, but there’s no choice. He could kill you next time.”

“He’d never do that.”

“He almost
did
.”

A tear ran down Cathy’s other cheek, but she didn’t say anything.

Jennifer knew it was over. Under state law, a wife could not be forced to testify against her husband. She could do so voluntarily,
but she couldn’t be coerced, no matter how serious her injury.

“Please,” Jennifer urged. “Think about your future….”

But Cathy’s body was rigid. She was going back to Billy.

“I’m sorry, Miss Munday, I
love
him and he loves me. I can’t do this to him.”

“But look what he did to you!”

“Sorry,” Cathy repeated. She stood up. “He’s gonna change.”

Jennifer grabbed her arm. “No, he’s
not!
He’s going to do it again!”

Cathy wrenched her arm free. “I gotta go. Thanks for trying to help.” She started for the door.

Jennifer handed her a business card. “If he does
anything
to you,
anything
, call me. Day or night, it doesn’t matter. My home number is on the card. Call me, Cathy. And think about what I said. You
have
to take a stand.”

Cathy mumbled another thanks and left the room. Jennifer followed and let her out the front door of the office, then listened
as her footsteps faded down the marble courthouse corridor.

Jennifer leaned against the receptionist’s desk and crossed her arms. It was late, and she was tired. Tired of pushing people
who didn’t want to be pushed, tired of carrying the burden of righteousness, tired of a lot of things. She was senior assistant
prosecutor in the county and Gardner Lawson’s live-in girlfriend. They shared an office and a bed. They were together around
the clock. But somehow it wasn’t enough.

“Mama is going to her room,” the woman told her seven-year-old daughter. “You and Molly play quietly.” They lived in a big
house on a shady street in Arlington, Virginia. It had a wide porch, a grassy backyard, and a narrow wooden staircase leading
to a long hall on the second floor. The light bulb at the top of the stairs was always burned out. Mama’s room was at the
end of the corridor.

Daddy worked for the government. He was gone all day and didn’t come home until late at night. Jenny and her sister watched
TV in the den: cartoons, and puppets, and racing robots. And Mama stayed in her room.

“I’m hungry,” Molly said.

Jenny looked at the clock. It was six-thirty, dark outside.

“I’m hungry,” Molly repeated, twisting an auburn curl with her tiny finger.

Jenny tiptoed up the stairs and felt her way along the oriental runner with the tip of her sneaker. She knocked on Mama’s
door. “What?” Mama called.

“Molly’s hungry. Can we have dinner?”

“In the freezer.”

“Are you coming down?”

“No.”

Jenny went to the kitchen and removed two TV dinners from the refrigerator. She heated the oven and put them in. Then she
set the table, poured milk, and helped Molly up into her chair.

“Hungry,” Molly groused.

“Dinner coming right up,” Jenny said with a laugh, pulling the foil off the top of the tins.

“I hate chicken!” Molly complained.

“Eat!” Jenny said.

Molly picked up a drumstick and gnawed it with her baby teeth. And the two girls dined in the twilight of their silent home.

“Jen!” Gardner called as he came through the office door. She was sitting on the desk in the alcove, her eyes focusing on
something far away. “What’s wrong?”

Jennifer stood up. “You’re late.”

“Sorry.” He kissed her cheek. “I had to review the Payson file. Hell of a mess.… And Granville called.”

“What about?”

“Big spelling test tomorrow. I had to quiz him.”

“Couldn’t his
mother
do that?”

“She, uh…”

“Don’t make excuses for her, Gardner.
She
couldn’t help him?”

“No.
She
couldn’t.”

They looked at each other for a moment. Jennifer had been with Gardner long enough to know the priorities in his life. Granville
came first, above everything. If Carole dropped the ball, Gardner was right there to pick it up.

“How did that domestic case go?” Gardner finally asked.

“It didn’t.”

“Spousal immunity?”

“She
loves
him.”

“Shit.”

“She might change her mind, but I doubt it.”

Gardner held up Jennifer’s coat. “You can’t force these things, Jen. They have to come around voluntarily.”

“If they’re still alive.” Jennifer slipped her arms into the sleeves.

“What say we stop by Paul’s Place on the way home? Grab a meal?” Jennifer hesitated by the door. “No.”

“No? You must be starved.”

“No,” Jennifer repeated. “I’m really not hungry.”

Sallie Allen adjusted the volume on the miniature tape recorder in her pocket as the preacher’s voice rattled the tin roof
of the open shed and echoed out into the night.

“Praise God, and be healed of all your mortal sins!” the preacher cried, gesticulating from his makeshift pulpit.

“Praise God!” fifty believers answered.

Sallie joined in the refrain. She had to make it look authentic, like she was part of the program. A petite woman in her late
twenties with an angular face and straight blond hair, she’d arrived at the isolated compound three days earlier and applied
for admission to the Church of the Ark, Incorporated, also known as CAIN. After interrogation about her financial assets and
beliefs, forfeiture of her cash, and a pledge of faith, she was welcomed into the group. No one knew that she was really an
investigative reporter for
Interview
magazine.

“You must give yourselves to the Lord, body and soul,” the preacher continued. “
Body
and
soul
…”

Sallie studied the man as he held forth on the platform, testing phrases for her article titled “Inside Cults, U.S.A.” He
was “tall, handsome, intelligent, and charismatic,” a man with refined Germanic features and a “piercing” stare. No. Too trite.
“Deceptive eyes.” That was better. It had more punch. And his name was a killer: Thomas Ruth. Biblical as hell.

“Others may not understand our beliefs,” Ruth continued, “but we stand firm in what
we
know
to be the truth!” He raised his arms in the air. “
We
see the light!
We
hear the call! We feel the touch of the Almighty on our skin!”

Sallie cautiously glanced around. The crowd was mesmerized. This was hot stuff.

“We take our instruction from no one but God,” Ruth went on, “and we follow his word to the letter.” His blue eyes narrowed.
“To the letter.” There was a warning in that line. “God’s punishment for nonbelievers is swift.” His eyes narrowed again.
“And it is
deadly
.”

Sallie felt a shiver race up her spine. This was what she had hoped for: the newest cult flavor. CAIN. A fire-and-brimstone
church in an abandoned granite quarry deep in the Appalachian mountains. A stunning preacher, a docile following. Secrecy,
intrigue, danger. It was going to make dynamite copy.

“Do you believe?” Ruth suddenly called out.

“Yes!” came the reply.

“Do you believe?”

“Yes!”

Sallie felt a tingle in her pelvis. Ruth’s voice was suddenly tender and seductive.

“Can you prove your belief to God?”

The crowd suddenly hushed.

Sallie had heard one other sermon since she’d come to the compound, and it wasn’t like this. She wondered where he was heading.

“Are you ready to walk the valley of
death
?”

“Yes,” someone murmured.

“
Who
will take the walk?” Ruth looked at the first row.

A hand went up.

Sallie suddenly felt uneasy. What was going on?

“Will
you
take the walk with me?” Ruth pointed at a young man in the third row whose hand was down. The man nodded.

“Raise your hand, son!”

The hand came up slowly.

Ruth smiled, his teeth gleaming white in the light of the naked bulbs strung down the center of the shed.

Sallie adjusted her recorder again. This was getting interesting.

“Who
else
will walk?” That wasn’t a question. It was a demand.

Others began to raise their hands, and Sallie became nervous. What did it mean to walk the valley? She raised her hand, too.

The room fell silent, and Ruth gazed at the congregation from his perch. Every hand was up. “Each of you agrees to walk the
valley of
death
?”

“Yes!” they replied.

“
You
?” Ruth moved his finger from person to person.

“Yes!”

“And
you
?”

“Yes!”

Every person singled out said yes. Sallie noticed the finger was nearing her position.

“And
you
?”

That was one row away.

“And
you
?”

Sallie heard no response.

“Will
you
take the walk?” Ruth repeated loudly.