Love Her Madly Read online

  I asked Delby to get me everything available on Vernon Lacker. When I checked my e-mail an hour later it was all there for me.

  Vernon came from a holy family. Both his parents were circuit preachers, no church, no flock to call their own. Once Vernon was born, his father continued to make his rounds through Arkansas, Missouri, and parts of Mississippi and Tennessee, while Vernon’s mother stayed home, taught her son the scriptures, and helped him to memorize them. At three, he could recite lengthy passages and his gift drew worshipers to his home, where he and his mother offered a Saturday evening service on their front porch intended to prepare them for the greater devotion required by the Lord the following day.

  His mother became pregnant again, and when Vernon’s father learned the news he stayed on his circuit, choosing to return home to another wife, choosing his other children over Vernon and the new baby sister. Even though he lived only 150 miles away, what with his new name and social security number it took years for Vernon’s mother to track him down. When she found out that he was a bigamist, she had him arrested. Bigamy is no small matter in Arkansas. Eventually, as a young teenager, Vernon visited his father in prison. And so arose his interest in the incarcerated.

  He graduated from a small Baptist college in Louisiana with a degree in theology, his concentration prison ministry. His mother’s cousin in Texas was married to a man up and coming in the Texas penal system and she got him a job: assistant to the chaplain at a minimum security prison for women. And when a jury a short time later sentenced a woman to death, he lobbied for the assignment at Gatesville. It was not difficult for him to get the position, because his mother’s cousin’s husband had been named warden of the new unit.

  The only jobs Vernon ever held before his prison career began—if you can call them jobs—were two internships his senior year in college. One was with a Reverend Raymond Tiner, who ran a correctional camp for teenage boys not far from the school. The other was with an Air Force chaplain at a nearby military base.

  I decided to start with Tiner and then move along to the Air Force, which would be a lot easier. I called the school as the warden’s wife had suggested. Administration told me that Reverend Tiner had retired years earlier and they didn’t have a present address. But after his camp had closed, he’d served for a few years as pastor at the Church of Christ right in town. Perhaps the present pastor would be able to tell me where I could find him. After she gave me that number, I asked her if the school had taped any of his sermons or lectures, so she transferred me to the library. No, sorry, they had nothing.

  Next, I called the Church of Christ rectory and told the present rector that I was with the college and that we were planning a centenary book with biographies of all our professors and instructors. Alas, we didn’t have an address for Reverend Tiner. Alas, neither did he. So I asked about taped sermons and there were none that he knew of, but he put me in touch with the auxiliary, the Ladies in Christ. Some of the ladies had been members for many years, and perhaps one of them might know of a taped sermon.

  I went through the same short series of lies with a Lady in Christ, who told me she didn’t know where Reverend Tiner was but she was happy to say that some of the parishioners probably still had some sixteen-millimeter home movies of Reverend Tiner’s holiday services, since they were so popular and drew people from miles around. She asked me why I was interested in them. I told her that when the centenary celebrations took place we would be showing old movies and tapes of faculty sermons. The Lady in Christ was more than happy to see what she could find. She’d get back to me.

  So then I had Delby get everything there was on Reverend Raymond Tiner. She found some biographical material in a Christian Who’s Who. He was born in Texas on the day a great hurricane destroyed Galveston. A very posh wedding reception was taking place in the top floor of a grand hotel sitting on a slight rise in the middle of the city. An hour after the storm struck, water had risen all the way to the ballroom and the guests sat on the tables, water swirling at their feet. One of them was pregnant and went into labor. Another of them was a doctor. He delivered Raymond Tiner in the eye of that storm.

  Raymond believed he was delivered by God. After high school, where he never received a grade lower than an A, he attended and graduated from Princeton and then went on to Union Theological Seminary in New York, where he received a Ph.D. He made his way through a series of parish churches, including the Church of Christ in Louisiana, until he found what he felt was his true calling; he served as chaplain at a mental hospital for the criminally insane in Middletown, Connecticut. After a failed crusade to eliminate treating the patients’ violent behavior through lobotomy, he headed to Louisiana and opened a school for incorrigibles, his work the forerunner of schools and camps that began popping up in rural America and became known as tough love facilities. Many of the schools, including his, were closed when young boys died trying to escape.

  To ease his mind, Tiner found a welcoming retreat at the last working Shaker community in the world, located in New Hampshire. And there the trail came to an end. There was no record of what became of him after his departure from New Hampshire.

  I found a number for the Shakers in New Hampshire and dialed. A young man answered. He told me he was in the process of joining the community, he and a friend, and that there was only one actual Shaker left. I told him I was an agent with the FBI and that I needed to speak with whoever was in charge, presumably the last Shaker. He said that would be Elder Charlotte. He told me he would ask her if she would agree to come to the phone. He added, “She’s ninety-three years old.”

  I waited. He came back. “Elder Charlotte would like to know what, specifically, the FBI might want to speak to her about.”

  I said, “Specifically, I want to find out if she knew a Raymond Tiner some years ago when he was staying with your community.”

  The name meant nothing to him, but he delivered the message. A few minutes later, a soft voice on the telephone asked me, “And who might you be, sister?”

  I said, “Is this Elder Charlotte?”

  “Yes.”

  “My name is Penelope Rice.”

  “Ah. Penelope. Wife of Agamemnon. The great weaver of cloth. And of evidence, I would surmise.” Very gracious. “Sister Penelope, here is what I wish to say to you. First and most important, if our society dies, we Believers do not wish to be remembered as chairs. More repugnant is the thought of our being remembered as an inspiration for Raymond Tiner’s rogue society, which is based solely on his uninformed interpretation of our founder’s philosophy, an utterly false interpretation.”

  I stayed calm, kept right on chatting her up. “How does his interpretation differ from yours, Elder Charlotte?”

  “There is just one difference, and it colors all else. I spent many hours debating him on this matter, but I could not sway him from his position and therefore was forced to ask him to leave. Our difference, I’m afraid, is that staggering.”

  “And did he leave?”

  “Oh, yes. He went on to create his own society—I couldn’t stop that—and I have no doubt they follow our historical and cultural traditions based on our founder’s philosophy, Hands to work and hearts to God. He would live off the land and survive on the intelligence and ingenuity bestowed on the human race by God Almighty.

  “His members, like ours, would no doubt be celibate, a choice God has given all of us. A choice for those of us who do not wish to procreate in order that we may dedicate our lives solely to God. We renounce our sordid propensity and ardent desire to copulate. Also, the time and dedication required to raise a good child precludes such a service. People outside don’t understand—”

  I interrupted as gently as I could. “Elder Charlotte, what else would you expect him to do, in terms of setting up a society of his own?”

  She cleared her throat, and her voice was no longer soft. “Reverend Tiner will no doubt pray in our way. We allow the Holy Spirit to enter us, and then we express the Spirit thr
ough physical movement and sound. It is a form of prayer whereby we give our minds and bodies over to the Lord. If people think of our method of prayer as shaking, so be it. But we do not call ourselves Shakers. That is a slur. Our name has always been the United Believers in Christ’s Second Coming. We are meant to be called Believers, which is how we refer to ourselves.”

  My heart dropped several beats. “Please repeat what you just said. Tell me again what the Believers believe.”

  “We believe in the second coming of Christ. But that is precisely where Reverend Tiner and I came to differ. He chose to follow a later interpretation of how the second coming should be defined. Our founder, an Englishwoman, was the Second Coming. She was God’s Daughter and, like His Son, She died for our sins.

  “But Reverend Tiner chose to go along with the Elders who led our society in the second century of our existence. They resolved that our founder was not the Daughter of God but rather a prophet who foretold that the Messiah would return again as a woman.

  “Just as the Reverend Tiner is wrong, the twentieth-century Elders were wrong, but they came to see their mistake and returned to the teaching that we few continue to hold dear. Our founder was officially pronounced Messiah—the Messiah who carried out God’s mission—when She overcame terrible trials and tribulations to found our society, to bring us from England to the United States, and to keep from being killed for her beliefs.

  “If you find Reverend Tiner, he will look like us but he is not us. He fell away to watch for Her, to await the second coming, which, of course, will never happen. It happened two hundred years ago.” Her voice began to tremble. “He took one of the two young men and three women we had adopted as children. The group would be the foundation for the renewal of the society on his imprudent terms.

  “We true Believers haven’t much time left. If the society dies with us we accept that. What Reverend Tiner has formed is not true. How can it be true when he has determined that his Messiah has just now come, that the Daughter of God, the Sister of Christ, is a murderer? A beast?”

  I found my voice. “Why didn’t you call the authorities?”

  “To the authorities, I am a chair.”

  I offered my condolences and then the second I hung up I called the Church of Christ back and asked to speak to the Lady in Christ again. I apologized if she’d been getting a busy signal. I said, “I’m trying to reach so many of our former professors.”

  She said she hadn’t called me back. She said, “I needed to pray before getting back to you. For guidance.”

  I said, “Is there a problem?”

  “Well…”

  “Did you find any home movies?”

  “Yes, I did. Three. Three of our ladies took movies of their children when they appeared in Reverend Tiner’s little plays. I have one of them. I watched it.”

  “You have it with you?”

  “Right here in my hands.”

  “Are his words on the movies?”

  “Yes. But the movies are the private property of the church, naturally. The thing is, one of our ladies works at the college and they just didn’t seem to know about any centenary. And when I watched the movie, well … I mean…”

  I started blathering away while I got on my cell phone and gave the signal.

  I kept on blathering until she said that there was someone at the door and she had to go. Before she could hang up, I got to hear her scream as the agents broke into her house, relieved her of the home movie, and left.

  I hung up and the phone rang. It was my friendly agent from Waco. “Northrup,” he reminded me. Then he said, “We got him.”

  “Who?”

  “The guy with the hammer and nails.”

  “Good. Who is he?”

  “He’s a cop.”

  “Oh, please.”

  “Want to meet him?”

  “Sure do.”

  “Can you come up here right away?”

  “I can. Why’d he do it?”

  “Someone paid him.”

  “Well, no kidding. I meant, why did someone…? Never mind. You don’t know, do you?”

  “No.”

  I drove the twenty miles to Waco, took me no time on the bypass, where someone had dropped concrete blocks on Scraggs’s vehicle. I found my way to the Federal Building, where Northrup was waiting for me. “Guy’s lawyer just got here.”

  Northrup took my elbow and hastened me down a corridor.

  “This particular lawyer happens to require a check for twenty-five thousand dollars deposited into his personal account before he sees a client, and he won’t see the client till after the check clears.”

  “How sticky was arresting this cop?”

  “Haven’t arrested him. He’s just here for questioning. If he’s arrested he’s not going to lead us where we need to go.”

  “With the kind of lawyer he’s got, I don’t think he’ll lead you anywhere.”

  “You don’t know my chief.”

  Hadn’t had the pleasure.

  The door to the chief’s office was open. Flung open, by the look of the lawyer. Northrup and I stood in the open doorway and watched.

  The cop sitting in the chair wasn’t in uniform, but he was a cop. He was in the middle of jerking his thumb toward the lawyer and saying, “I never seen this dude in my life. He’s not any lawyer of mine.”

  The lawyer said, “Shut up. We are on federal property. We’re in the offices of the FBI. We’re bugged.”

  The cop said to him, “Who sent you?”

  The lawyer slammed his briefcase down on the chief’s desk. That always shuts a client up.

  I said to Northrup, “If this office is bugged, why are we standing here eavesdropping?”

  We walked in.

  The lawyer said, “Is this the police?”

  The cop said, “I’m the police.”

  The lawyer said, “I told you to shut up, you damn fool.”

  The chief jumped up and came around his desk to pump my hand. “A real honor to meet you, ma’am, a real real honor. Name’s Brewster.”

  I said, “I’m glad to meet you, too, Brewster.”

  Then Brewster said to the lawyer, “I’d like to offer you the great privilege of meeting Miz Poppy Rice, visitin’ us here from DC where she reconfigured our crime lab. Did such a good job runnin’ the place they all got calluses from pattin’ her back. Now she’s our A-One investigator, and her car is the very one your client here chose to demobilize with the contents of his trusty tool kit.”

  The client said, “I ain’t his client. And I never got near any FBI—”

  The lawyer told him to shut up again, and the chief aimed me toward a chair. “Take a load off, Agent. Get in here, Northrup. Shut the door behind you.”

  I sat, Northrup stood guard.

  The lawyer said to me, “It is indeed a pleasure to meet you, Agent. I have worked with your office many times, another great pleasure.” He looked to Brewster. “Listen, can I speak with you people alone?”

  Brewster said, “’Course. Northrup, take the detainee outa my office.”

  The detainee was very happy to get out of Brewster’s office.

  The lawyer said, “I am about to go through the necessary motions expected of me, and then I’m washin’ my hands of whatever shit’s comin’ down here. That okay with you?”

  Brewster looked to me. “Miz Rice?”

  I said, “Your investigation, sir.”

  He stood up and stuck his head out the door. “Northrup, bring the perp back in.”

  The perp’s voice came through the door before he did. “I ain’t a perp.” In the doorway, the perp continued protesting. “I have a right to call my union. I—”

  Northrup yanked him into the room, told him to sit back down, shut the door behind him, and stood guard again.

  Brewster said to the perp, “A representative of your employer, the Houston Police Department, is on his way. You can talk union with him when he gets here. Since he’s runnin’ a little late, maybe
we can get to the bottom of this and then maybe he won’t get here at all.

  “First, real quick, I got a few intros to finish up. Miz Rice, this here gentleman with the briefcase is H. Johnson Medved, Esquire, who is representin’ that little fella settin’ over there.”

  The little fella, the cop, wearing all brown like a storm trooper, was way past six feet tall and had to weigh two-seventy-five, minimum. He stood up.

  “I am a Houston police officer. My name is Richard Purcell.”

  The lawyer said to him, “Sit down. And how many times do I have to tell you to shut up?”

  “You ain’t got the right to tell me a goddamn thing.”

  So the cop and the lawyer went at it, and Brewster joined in helping the lawyer do as he’d asked, go through the motions leading to a point when the lawyer could desert the client he was hired to represent. I didn’t see the percentage in that. I wanted to know if whoever hired the lawyer was the same person who hired the cop. Northrup was watching me, watching me think.

  I scoped the office and was impressed to see the unexpurgated edition of the Random House dictionary on a stand in the corner. Even though this Texas department chief with the FBI was also a cowboy who liked to yell and was as capable of turning as beet red as the next guy, he saw the need to have a dictionary on hand and not just any dictionary.

  I sidled over to the stand and, having taken my cue from the briefcase-smashing lawyer, I hefted the dictionary, held it chest high, and dropped it.

  They all drew their weapons except for Northrup, who had obviously been head of his class in observation skills. The office door flew open and several agents, also with weapons drawn, flew in and froze in crouched positions just like in the movies. Jesus. Both the cop and the lawyer had their own guns pointed at the dictionary. Then they saw Northrup, smiling, arms folded across his chest. He said into the extraordinary silence, “Miz Rice accidentally dropped the chief’s dictionary.” He unfolded his arms. “But don’t you move, ma’am. Allow me.”

  He came over and picked it up.

  I said, “I’m so clumsy.”