Read Online Strangers by Bill Pronzini - Free Book Online

to mess with him, that’s what you mean. He’s one hard dude.”
    I had a residence address for Jimmy Oliver, but not his place of employment. I asked Firestone if he knew.
    â€œJimmy, he likes horses, does part-time ranch work when his ma don’t make him work with her at her church.”
    â€œWhich ranch?”
    Shrug. “I dunno, now. Me and Jimmy don’t hang, never did.”
    â€œWhich church, then?”
    â€œOne over on Humboldt, by the ballpark. Divine something. Jesus freaks, you know? Mrs. Oliver, she cooks and cleans for old Pastor Raymond. But watch out for her, man. She’s a mean old bitch and she don’t like Cody any more than the sheriff does.”

 
    6
    There was nobody home at the Olivers’ older, ranch-style house, so I drove over to Humboldt Street. It was a pothole-patched street that ran parallel to the Union Pacific tracks. The ballpark—a dry-looking Little League field, actually—was at the eastern end, the church Rick Firestone had mentioned in a lot diagonally across from it.
    Church of the Divine Redeemer, it was called. A plain building painted white with a huge gold-colored wooden cross jutting skyward above the entrance. Small parking area in front, another small, detached building at the rear that was probably a rectory. One of those offshoot sects, judging from its name and size, that take root in rural towns like this one. Not necessarily Old Testament, fire-and-brimstone religion, but nonetheless the kind that appeals to individuals with strong, conservative religious beliefs. Its congregation would be small, loyal, and strict in its adherence to biblical teachings—“Jesus freaks,” in Firestone’s offensive term.
    I pulled into the deserted parking area, past a signboard that gave the service hours and announced something called a “prayer breakfast” on the coming weekend, and parked and went first to the church. The unlocked door opened into a large, empty room about as austerely appointed as you could get. Rows of unpainted pews, a lectern in the middle of a raised platform and an undersized pipe organ off to one side, and the wall behind the platform bare except for the two-by-three-foot outline of a cross and a gold-painted wooden crucifix propped up below it. The crucifix was nearly twice the size of the outline and appeared to be newly made, the bas-relief Christ figure roughly but effectively carved, so it hadn’t been the one that had hung on the wall. That was all there was to see. It struck me as a pretty grim place to worship, but then in no-nonsense churches like this, God would be considered more fearsome than benign and devotion to Him a pretty serious business.
    â€œCan I help you, brother?”
    I was still facing toward the lectern when the voice, a commanding baritone edged with suspicion, spoke from behind me. When I turned, the man who’d just entered came striding up the center aisle. He looked to be in his upper seventies—thick white hair, the skin of his angular face as age-crinkled as parchment, dressed all in black—but he moved in an authoritative fashion that belied his years.
    â€œI thought I heard a car drive in,” he said. His expression was stern, guarded, and there were shimmers of light like banked fires in eyes so dark they were almost black. “Your reason for entering the Lord’s house uninvited, brother?”
    â€œI didn’t realize I needed an invitation. The door was unlocked.”
    â€œWas it? Yes, of course it was. I must be more careful.”
    â€œThe church doesn’t have an open-door policy?”
    â€œNot since Satan sent one of his minions to steal Jesus’s image from us,” he said bitterly, gesturing toward the wall behind the lectern. “Our most treasured possession, a fine bronze crucifix presented by members of the congregation.”
    â€œI’m sorry to hear it.”
    â€œNo sorrier than I,