Zeke
Annabeth had driventhem over to the site of the church, the rebuild. She had initially proposed that they return tomorrow in the daylight, but her editor had emailed her saying he needed her in the office in the morning, so tonight it was. It was just as well. Zeke was already in the shit box with his trainer, and the sooner he could get back, the better. His arm was throbbing, back to feeling like it had a few weeks ago, the unexpected swerve in the car bruising something that was too delicate to be bruised.
The church site was, frankly, magnificent. Nothing like some homespun churches that Zeke had driven by in Oklahoma growing up, compact brick architecture with small white steeples and crosses atop. No, this was a sprawling, multibuilding compound. The interior lights were on in many of the buildings, so they got a sense of its scope even from the blackness of the parking lot.
“Pastor Matthew likes his investors,” Annabeth said dryly. “As you can see. They have a school, a church, housing for theday workers, an industrial kitchen…you name it, it’s here. It’s almost like a resort. Except it’s obviously nothing like a resort.”
“I’m a little confused,” Sybil said. “Patience seemed aware that you were lying to him about why we were there, but also…she seems to be complacent with her life? Am I misunderstanding?”
“No, that’s about right,” Annabeth said. “I grew up in a church not that different from the Revivalists. A lot of us learn to live with the contradictions. Patience was always close with Elizabeth, from what I’ve learned, but simultaneously, I knew if I told her why we were coming, she wouldn’t let us. I also know that she falls in line with whatever it is that Matthew demands—and Betty is essentially dead to them for having left that night. That’s what they all realized eventually: that she hadn’t died in the fire, that she’d fled. Sometimes I wonder if they’d prefer if she’d died.” She paused. “But anyway, I figured we could get away with that space in between, walking the narrow line. I guess I would say that Patience has been defanged, but she’s not toothless.”
“So Betty might reach out to her if she were in trouble? Or is she aware that she’s been made an outcast, that, as you said, she’d be more forgivable if she were dead?” Sybil asked.
“A complicated question without a good answer,” Annabeth said. “When I left the church for good, most of my family stopped talking to me. I don’t have any reason to think Patience—or the other two brothers—are any different.”
“Can you spell this out for us like we’re five?” Zeke said, walking toward the main building before Annabeth beckoned him back. “This looks like much more than just a church; it looks more like a commune. Is that what you’re saying: that this is much more than just a church?”
His arm was screaming now; the cold was making it worse.He wanted Annabeth to give them answers; they’d flown all this way, and he’d gotten four pointed texts throughout the day from Timothy asking him just what in the actual fuck he was doing blowing off his PT session. He needed her to spell things out, and he needed her to spell them out quickly.
“Also correct,” Annabeth said. “When Pastor Jones died…or ran…whichever theory you believe, he was already going national with it. A slick website; sermons available for purchase; customized Bibles.”
Zeke exchanged a glance with Sybil. The Bible in the flour tin.
“People were moving here to join up, though Pastor Jones made them go through a series of…I don’t know, purity tests? Loyalty tests? Before they could do so,” Annabeth continued. “To be honest, no one local minded at first—it was a good thing for the economy, and I think the members enjoyed being taken seriously on a national scale. The church bank accounts were certainly flourishing, though after the fire, I don’t think anyone wanted to look too closely, likely because Jones had clearly been skimming off the top for himself. And if they acknowledged that, their pastor wasn’t just dead, he’d have been a false god too. Easier to just eulogize him as a saint, you know?”
“So before the fire, Jones was pitching religion with a side bonus of personal fame,” Sybil said. “And profit.”
“Exactly. Then after the fire, Matthew took it to an entirely different level. I think his YouTube page has over a million subscribers last I looked.”
“The other brothers aren’t involved?” Zeke asked. He was trying to piece together where exactly Betty figured into all of this, why any of it mattered, how this helped them helpher. Maybe Sybil saw the chess pieces on the board in a way that he didn’t. Mostly, he was beginning to resent this drain of his time and energy.
“No, they are,” Annabeth said. “I actually don’t know the specifics of why Matthew was next in line after Pastor Jones, only that he was hand-selected to marry Patience when she was eighteen—he’s a decade older and had been in the church for a while, and my understanding is that Jones did so to make him his number two. Also, the two others who died that night, along with their mother, were quite senior in the church. That probably sped his ascension along. Fortunately, none of the parishioners themselves were killed.”
“But you said on the phone—that the pastor might have been the one to start the fire?” Zeke asked. Even he could hear the impatience in his voice.
“He was close to being indicted for a variety of financial crimes. Honestly, he probably could have been indicted for more—the emotional abuse, that dubious treasurer death, and the general coercion that ran deep. But anyway, enough of his DNA was on the premises that I guess the Feds decided good riddance. Since all of them who were killed were so high up, and probably complicit, and there were no obvious suspects, I imagine they decided good riddance to them all.”
“Right, okay,” Zeke said. “Maybe we should head back,” he said just as Sybil said:
“And where does Levi fit in?”
“Oh god,” Annabeth laughed. “Levi and I went to high school together. He was always the black sheep of the family. You could tell he didn’t believe a thing that came out of his father’s mouth. I liked him a lot. He was artistic, broody, constantly getting in trouble at home, which meant naturally, as a teenager, I found him wildly appealing in a platonic sort of way since I was already semi-out to my parents and friend group—the religion thing notwithstanding—and also, I think they all took vows of, like, purity, even Levi.”
“So couldn’t he have been the one to start the fire?” Sybil suggested, even though the postcards dated back for a couple of years, and it certainly seemed to Zeke that Levi was long gone by then.
“Honestly,” Annabeth said, “I think there are a whole host of people who would have had plenty of reasons to burn this place down, literally and figuratively. Betty, sure, since she was just about to turn eighteen. Levi, for being shunned. The pastor, as a way to escape. Matthew, because he came into power, and you saw their house—I mean, the other parishioners don’t live that way.” She clicked a button on her car key, and the doors unlocked. “If you ask around here enough, you’ll probably have a list of two dozen people who didn’t mind seeing this place go up in smoke.”
“So if Betty didn’t do it, maybe one of those two dozen people knows that Betty knows much more than she should,” Sybil said.
Annabeth opened the driver’s side door.
“I couldn’t tell you that she didn’t,” she said. “But if she’s missing and someone thinks she does indeed know more than she should, that would be an entirely logical reason to run.”
49
Night Twenty
Sybil
