The Redeemed Page 21

  “Let’s make a deal,” Aaron said.

  “No deal.”

  Hirst rolled, the back of his neck aching where Adams had hit him.

  “The only deal any of you make is with God,” Adams said. He turned back to Sarah. “But no matter what happens, you die first.”

  “Then do it, asshole,” Sarah said, her face pensive, as if death was an engaging thought, even welcoming. “What are you waiting for?”

  Father Adams’ eyes bulged and a vein on his forehead stuck out. He brought his weapon to bear on Sarah.

  “Shoot her and I kill you,” Aaron said, his voice cold.

  “So brave,” Adams said. “Yet so stupid.”

  Hirst had the IV stand in his grasp, but the end of it was still too far to reach without drawing attention his way.

  Adams’ gun moved slightly, his aim now transferred to Aaron.

  “No!” Sarah shouted.

  Hirst reared up and swung the IV stand. It connected with Father Adams’ ankle with a crack. Adams bent at the waist and screeched. He raised his gun once more, this time not hesitating to fire.

  Hirst spun and rolled with the impact of the bullet in his shoulder. At first there was no pain. Only the feeling that he had been punched with a sledgehammer. But he rolled with it, then rolled again, stopping at the base of the IV stand.

  Adams’ gun fired once more, loud in the narrow corridor. Hirst had no idea where that bullet went. He had to focus on his gun, taped to the bottom of the IV stand.

  He twisted into position, pushed the IV stand more to the left to achieve the angle needed, and grabbed the handle. His fingers wouldn’t wrap around the butt of the weapon. His fingers weren’t responding. He scanned his arm to examine the blood pouring out of his wound. The bullet must have damaged something that prevented him from using his hand. He was right handed. There was no way he could fire his weapon with his left, even if he wanted to.

  The bottom of the IV stand was a silver disk that housed the wheels. In the way the IV stand lie on the floor, it would be virtually impossible for his left hand to get to the gun unless he flipped it all the way around.

  Pain in his shoulder rolled in like a poisonous wave of red.

  Suddenly someone was on him. Someone had dove on him, landing on his shoulder. The world wavered in and out, his vision fading. He snapped back at the sound of a gun firing.

  Aaron.

  He had jumped on Hirst. His hand was wrapped around the taped up gun at the base of the IV stand. It was Hirst’s gun that fired and the bullet had hit Father Adams in the center of the bombs strapped to his body.

  Adams faltered back a step, looking down at the bloody mess seeping out of his chest.

  Hospital security raced around the corner, weapons drawn.

  “Put it down!” the first one yelled. “Put it down,” he shouted again.

  Father Adams looked up at them, his face calmer. “I’m going to blow the place up,” he said.

  When he reached for the bombs on his chest, Hirst shouted for the security guards to stand down. He shouted that the bombs were fakes.

  But no one heard him over the sound of weapons fire.

  Father Adams’ body jerked like a marionette puppet governed by an insane puppeteer, the gun falling harmlessly from his grasp. When the gunfire ceased, Father Adams stayed on his feet for a few more seconds.

  Then he fell down in a heap of blood and torn flesh.

  Hirst lowered his head, shut his eyes, and let the world swim away. It was warmer down there and more comfortable.

  Asleep, the pain stopped too.

  Chapter 46

  When Detective David Hirst woke up in his own hospital bed, more than a dozen people surrounded him.

  “What’s this?” he asked softly, his eyes half lidded.

  “Welcome to the land of the living,” Parkman said.

  “Yeah, great …”

  Sarah stepped into view, a crutch under her arm. “You saved my life with your shoulder. I need to say thanks.”

  He tried to shrug, to show her his shoulder action, but it failed miserably.

  “What happened to my shoulder?” Hirst asked, still dazed.

  A doctor said, “You took a bullet but we got it out. You’ll be just fine. Even back on the job with a couple of months.”

  Hirst scanned the faces in the room. More than half of them were his colleagues from work.

  “What are you guys all doing here?”

  “We’re here to congratulate you on nailing the priest killer,” his old partner Paul said. “Who would’ve thought to strap a gun to the bottom of that IV stand in the belief that Adams would come for Sarah? Man, that was genius. Then to knock her over and out of the way. You saved her life and Aaron’s and Parkman’s. What I still can’t figure out is how you shot him left handed. You always sucked with your left hand.”

  Hirst looked at Aaron who stood behind Sarah. Aaron offered him a subtle shake of his head. He turned to Parkman. His head moved in an almost imperceptible nod.

  “Luck, I guess,” Hirst said.

  “Well, the media has picked up the whole story. You’re a fucking hero, Hirsty.”

  “Don’t call me that.” Hirst winced at a sudden sharp pain in his side.

  “It’s been too long. We’ll always call you Hirsty after all the beer you knocked back in your twenties.”

  “What else have the papers been saying?”

  “How brilliant you were to call Parkman and Sarah in on this.” Paul glanced at them and smiled. “Sarah’s got quite the reputation and even though there were mixed feelings about her, she got front page for being the one that saved everyone in that church. She even allowed herself to be used as bait in the hospital to get the priest killer even though she almost died a few times. Congratulations to all of you.”

  Everyone in the room clapped, the doctor included.

  “We need to leave now,” Sarah said.

  “Where are you going?” Hirst asked.

  “Home for a rest.” She took Hirst’s hand, leaned down and whispered, “Thanks for listening to me. Because of you we all made it.” She met his eyes.

  “The thanks goes to you,” Hirst said. “For my wife, and getting me out of that church and—”

  “Shhh,” she said, shaking her head. “You asked for our help. We came. We helped. But now we have to leave.”

  “Be well. Stay in touch.”

  Sarah stepped away. Aaron followed her.

  Parkman put a hand on Hirst’s good shoulder and moved a red toothpick to the other side of his mouth. “Take care of yourself.”

  “What is it with you and your toothpicks?” Hirst asked.

  “Call us if you ever need anything again,” Parkman said, ignoring Hirst’s question.

  “You do the same. If I can ever return the favor …”

  At the door, Sarah and Aaron waited. Minutes later, they were gone and Hirst was alone with his colleagues and his reality.

  The case was closed. It was truly over. And he had been shot for the first time in his life. It wasn’t so bad. A little time off work. A long rest. Maybe a little vacation.

  Maybe he would head up along the coast to Santa Rosa when he got out of the hospital.

  There were a few people who live and work in Santa Rosa that he needed to buy dinner for.

  Maybe a few dinners.

  He could take Janice. They could make a holiday out of it.

  The good Lord knew he needed a vacation.

  Chapter 47

  When they got to the car, Aaron helped Sarah in and stored her crutch in the back with him.

  “Where to?” Parkman asked.

  “Home.”

  “Home as in Santa Rosa?”

  Sarah nodded. “I need to heal. I need a break. I can’t keep this up on a crutch. When I’m trained better, running and active, I have a job to do.”

  “What job?” Aaron asked.

  “I want to locate that cop I once knew from my childhood. I have a score to
settle.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. You can’t run around settling scores with cops.”

  “Cop or not, he has to be made accountable for what he did.”

  Parkman started the car and drove out of the hospital parking lot.

  “I wanted to ask you, Sarah,” Aaron said from the backseat. “How did you know how it was going to go down in the hospital? How did you know to tape the gun and to be at the west side?”

  “Vivian.”

  “I gathered that much. But I hadn’t seen any notes. How did she communicate all that to you?”

  Sarah watched the landscape pass by through her window.

  “She’s mostly in my head now.”

  That was greeted by silence. Parkman stole a glance her way.

  “We can still use automatic writing,” Sarah said. “But Vivian has learned to insert thoughts into my consciousness. It almost feels like a twin is speaking to me through telepathy. I know the thought is in my mind, but it isn’t an original thought.”

  “Wow,” Aaron said.

  “The only problem is that I also get her memories from when she was here on Earth with our parents.”

  “How is that a problem? You now have two sets of childhood memories with Caleb and Amelia.”

  “Vivian was brutally raped and murdered.”

  Another moment of silence.

  Then Parkman said, “I’m so sorry.”

  “I can almost see the man’s face when it happened.” Sarah watched a Ford Mustang pass them on the left, paying only enough attention to see it go by. “Sometimes I have a Vivian nightmare.” She focused on the Mustang again. “While I’m awake.”

  “Oh man,” Aaron whispered.

  “To quell those thoughts or help ease them, I need to find that cop. He has to pay for what he did.”

  “What about Vivian’s murderer?”

  “He died in Europe. I can’t re-kill him as much as I would like to.”

  “Parkman is a solid investigator,” Aaron said. “He’ll help you with whatever you need, as will I.”

  “I hate being haunted by these horrid thoughts that aren’t mine but I’m happy with how close I’ve gotten to my sister. We can talk without anyone listening now. Messages are faster and easier. But it hurts my heart so much to feel what Vivian went through in her last lonely moments as a flesh and blood body. I’ll kill every rapist I can for what happened to her.”

  “Okay, Sarah, but first healing.”

  She nodded. “First healing. I can’t chase the asshole like this.”

  An image floated through her mind. She closed her eyes and held her temples.

  “What is it?” Parkman asked.

  The image intensified. A fist coming down. Blood. The man’s face. She recognized him. More blood. Vivian’s clothes ripped off. Her young body exposed. Her cry for her mother. Then …

  Sarah forced her eyes open and clenched her fists. “I can’t handle it sometimes. It’s too much. Vivian tries to insulate me, but she can’t in order to keep our connection strong.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Death. Murder. Her rape.”

  “I’m sorry, Sarah.”

  “Me too, Parkman. Me too. Now that I’m redeemed, I feel like I’m The Haunted.”

  “Sounds like it.”

  The car raced toward Santa Rosa and a dismal future.

  Afterword

  Dear Reader,

  I think it needs to be said that I have no personal issue, grudge against, or angst toward Catholicism as a religion, nor any other religion for that matter. Because Catholicism is one of the largest religions in the world with more than 1.6 billion members, and it’s one of the bloodiest religions, I chose it to be the focus of this novel.

  When I read in the early part of 2014 that the United Nations had requested archived evidence on the abuse of tens of thousands of children by Catholic priests, I was astounded that the Vatican denied this request. Actually, I’m shocked that the denial is even allowed. The United Nations accused the Vatican of turning a blind eye on decades of sexual abuse of children by priests and ridiculed church official’s “code of silence” imposed on clerics as the Church moved abusers from church to church in an attempt to handle the abuse internally.

  Child molestation is an absolute disgrace. The fact that it happens at all makes me ashamed to be human. How can an adult hurt a child in such a way, all in the name of a moment’s selfish pleasure? It’s an absolute abomination. Once this horrific act has taken place and investigators have enough evidence or a statement to name a suspect, that person needs to be held accountable for what they have done in the most brutal fashion afforded by law.

  The fact that these suspects represent a church, whichever church that might be, is more than astounding. It’s atrocious.

  But what’s worse is that the Church protects these individuals by, “Handling it internally.”

  So I decided to fictitiously, in the novel you just read, kill off a few of these assholes.

  As a writer, I often find my tales are based on something I’ve read in the news that has incensed me. Whether the content is positive or negative, scary or happy, my novels are all based on research, personal experience, beliefs, ideas, ideals, and ultimately, imagination.

  For me, every story begins with a What if …

  I’ve been on a spiritual journey since I was very young. It started with Sunday school at the tender age of six or seven. Long yellow buses picked me up on Sunday mornings and drove me to a large building with huge windows—not a church—where they would scare the shit out of me. A yard stick, an agenda of fear, and a side serving of guilt for being born were my first experiences with religion.

  By the age of nine I was told that I had to ask Jesus into my heart or I would die and burn in a lake of fire and I would never see my parents ever again. It was explained to me that because of what Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, women were punished with the pain of childbirth and men were punished with the pain—supposedly in their backs—of providing and working to feed and clothe their families. Because of what happened in that fabled Garden all those years ago, we’re all sinners. Even as we’re born, we are born into sin, no matter how nice we are or how hard we try to lead a good, solid life.

  I left that church—cult—in 1979. It wasn’t until six years later, at the age of sixteen, that I wanted to understand God, myself and religion more. So I began Bible study. I spent time at a Pentecostal church where they spoke in tongues. I examined the history of the Quakers who shook on the floor of the church. In my late teens, I learned about Mormons by spending a week in a Mormon family’s home and visited their church where we drank the blood of Christ and ate his body. I learned how a man named Joseph Smith saw an angel in the early 1800s and began the Mormon religion.

  Religion began to seem a little crazy to me.

  Ultimately this all led to my early twenties where I examined Buddhism, Judaism and Islam. Karen Armstrong is a wonderful author on Religion who wrote, The Battle for God: A History of Fundamentalism among others. I also found Deepak Chopra’s How to Know God to be a moving experience.

  After visiting various churches, and reading a myriad of books on the subject, I found David Gersten’s Are You Getting Enlightened, or Losing Your Mind? This book debunked what a lot of modern religion stood for and explained how many were based on pagan religions and how even things like Easter was a pagan festival. The symbolic story of the death of the son on the cross and his rebirth was one told countless times in the ancient world.

  A Sumerian goddess, Ishtar, was hung naked on a stake and was resurrected and ascended, as reportedly Jesus did, too. One of the oldest resurrection myths was Horus, an Egyptian, who was born December 25.

  As this is slowly becoming a debate on religion, which I did not intend to have here, I will conclude that there was no mention of Easter in the New Testament. Easter’s date is not a fixed date. It is dictated by phases of the moon, which is quite pagan.


  Having said all that, I’m not advocating people to walk away from their current religion or belief system. We’re all at a different level spiritually and I have seen the church help many people in their time of need. Mother Teresa is a perfect example of what modern religion is capable of.

  Belief and faith are very personal things. As much as I won’t push my beliefs on someone, I don’t want their beliefs pushed on me. As said in the novel, beliefs are simply opinions you’re not willing to reconsider.