If Angels Fall (18 page)

His angels first appeared as disease, despair and
death

Yet when Heaven commands

Each to remove their dark disguise

Lo, we behold, the Seraphim,

Cleansed by the light of one million suns.

The glory of knowing the Face of God

Keller flipped through the book, studying the
seraphim, God’s highest ranking angels. Isaiah had been blessed for he had
looked upon their beauty, each with six wings, surrounded by flames.
Sanctus.
Sanctus. Sanctus. Dominus Deus sabaoth.
 Keller stopped at a passage he’d
read a thousand times:
angels can be summoned for almost any imaginable
emergency and for any task
...

He loved his books. They confirmed the Truth. Angels
come at times of desperation. Celestial fixers. It was revealed to him one
night in the institute where he had sought help. The answer came in a vision:
your children are waiting. The angels will help you, if you find them. But they
were disguised. Wearing masks. Do not be deceived by their false identities.
They belong to no one until you find them. And you will find them.

If you believed. It was a test of his faith. Keller
smiled and rocked. He had found the first. Danny
Raphael
Becker. Raphael
of the powers.
Healed by God.
He had still to find the others. Only then
would God assist him in the transfiguration. Keller rocked in thought.

Prolonged severe grief reaction, the doctor at the
institute had called it. What a fool. He could not comprehend that Keller’s
life had been preordained. He did not know the glory of God. So many didn’t. So
many had been bereft of His infinite love. If only those in anguish knew the
divine truth as he did. It had been revealed to him.

If only he had spent more time with his children.

No, he had been chosen. He was the enlightened one who
would demonstrate God’s wonder. That was why he joined the university group.
Not to obtain help, but to bestow it upon those in pain.

Keller rocked.

Maps, charts, diagrams, enlarged photographs,
calendars, news clippings, and notes covered the living room walls from floor
to ceiling. More papers, charts, maps, journals, and binders overflowing with
notes were piled on the large computer table near the far wall.

He focused on one picture—the fading snapshot of his
three dead children: Pierce, Alisha, and Joshua. Laughing, wearing colorful
cone-shaped hats, a half-eaten chocolate cake before them. It was Alisha’s six
birthday. Three weeks before they drowned.

They never found the bodies.

Do not be deceived by their false identities.

Remember the will of the Creator.

***

The Will of the Creator.

It shone in Reverend Theodore Keller’s eyes the night
he watched his rural California church burn to the ground.

“It is the will of the Creator, Edward,” his father
said to him as the wood crackled and the flames devoured the cross atop the
steeple. Edward was ten-years-old and took pleasure in his father’s tears. No
one would ever know that it was Edward who set the fire by igniting Bibles in
the pulpit, an act inspired by the whippings he endured at the hands of his
father in the name of God.

“Spare the rod and spoil the child!” the Reverend
thundered after Edward committed sins as heinous as spilling his milk at the
supper table, or failing to wash away a trace of dirt from his hands before
inspection. “Edward, fetch the rod.” His father would command him to get the
viperlike leather strap hanging from a nail inside the study near the painting
of Golgotha. Edward would tremble. He had long ago forsaken pleading for mercy.
Begging was a sign of weakness, a failing to be expunged with more lashes.
“Honor they father and thy mother!” his father would yell and Edward would
dutifully drop his pants, exposing his buttocks. The Reverend would twist him
over his knee, raise the strap high over his head, bringing it down so swiftly
it hummed slicing through the air before
thwacking
across Edward’s
scarred and tender flesh. The Reverend would grunt savagely, spittle flying
from his mouth as he delivered each blow. Edward would bite down on a spoon to
keep from screaming. His mother would hurry to another room and pray. It always
ended with his father dropping a Bible on Edward’s bleeding rear end, ordering
him to memorize another chapter by morning. Some days, he literally limped to
school, his ears ringing with the
thwack! Thwack!
of the strap.

“You are but a lamb,” the Reverend bellowed the night
before the fire. He was beating Edward for a crease he had found in his freshly
made bed. “You are a burnt offering, a sacrifice I will not withhold from my
God! I will not refuse to place you on the altar!”

That night in bed, Edward writhed with fear and pain,
reading the Bible. He was jolted with the realization that his father’s love
for his church superseded everything. Even his son’s life. The crack of the
strap and the Reverend’s words echoed in Edward’s mind.
I will not refuse to
place you on the altar!

That’s when God first spoke to Edward. Cleanse your
father of his piety. Save him with the fire of purification. The cracking of
the strap. The cracking of the fire. Punishment for the son. Punishment for the
father.

“Whoever committed this desecration shall be damned
all the days of his life.” Keller’s father fell to his knees, sobbing as his
church burned, brightly, gloriously.

Deliver us from evil. Edward grinned, flames painting
his face.

Keller rocked and remembered his children.

He could hear them. Crying.

Keller rocked.
Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak.
Was
there time to see it again?
Squeak-creak. Squeak-creak.

Keller left the chair and lifted an ancient Kodak
movie projector from the closet, settling it on the big table. He returned to
the closet for a cardboard box of aluminum film canisters, rummaging through it
until finding one marked: “Josh at Three.” He threaded the film, aimed the
projector and started the movie. The dog watched, tilting his head.

An intense white square burned on the wall, darkening
and streaking as the leader flowed over the lens. A little boy’s face appears,
slightly out of focus. The camera pulls back. The boy is sitting on the floor
of an elegant home. The Golden Gate bridge is visible through a bay window. The
boy is handsome, dressed in a white shirt, vest, bow tie, and dark pants. His
face is fervent with expectation. Two older children, a boy and a girl, are
next to him, smiling. The little boy sits before a large gift-wrapped package.
The camera tightens on a card that reads “To Josh, Love, Daddy. P.S. Sorry I
couldn’t be home. I’ll make it next time, PROMISE!” The camera retreats. A
woman’s hand comes in to view, motioning to the boy. He stands and excitedly
tears away the paper to get at the treasure it holds. A flowing white mane
emerges. Then a saddle. The boy’s eyes widen. It’s a white rocking horse. He
leaps upon it and begins rocking. The other children touch it. Tears sting
Keller’s eyes.

That day in his home office. Josh toddled in while
Keller was on the phone, closing some long-forgotten deal. Josh, arms open,
Daddy, Daddy, I love my daddy. Grabbing at Keller while he was in the middle of
crucial negotiations. Josh’s arms struggling to hug him. Not now, damn it. I am
busy. Get the hell out of here. Josh’s arms struggling to hold him. Josh
crying, his arms cold from the water. Hang on to Daddy. Josh slipping from his
neck, vanishing into the black water. Get the hell out.
You never gave
yourself to them. They only wanted you. And it would have cost you nothing.

But you paid with everything to learn that, didn’t
you?

The camera shakes, the picture blurs. The boy rocks
and waves.

Tears stream down Keller’s face. He cannot stop them.

He reduces the projector’s speed to slow motion.

Joshua, his youngest child, smiles at the camera. He
is a good little boy. His hair has been neatly brushed by his mother. He blinks
shyly. So vulnerable. Innocent. Frame by frame the camera clicks until Keller’s
tears blur the picture.

Suddenly Joshua steps from the wall!

Keller’s jaw drops.

A resplendent aura of ever-changing color emanates
from his tiny figure as he stands in the brilliant light of the projector. The
features of his face undulate ethereally, and Keller sniffs and squints as he
tries to comprehend the apparition.

“Joshua? Oh, Josh. It is you! You have come!”

Keller slips from the rocking chair to his knees.

“Praise Him! Praise Him!”

Tears flow down his face. He opens his arms and inches
closer to the child. It is a sign! A divine sign! His reward!

“Praise God!” Keller’s voice breaks with joy.

The film clicks faster, then slaps wildly in the
take-up reel as the movie ends, trapping the squinting child in the fierce
glare of the projector’s light.

“I want to go home,” Danny Becker pleads weakly, his
chin wrinkles, and he begins sobbing. “I want my mommy and daddy.”

Keller stretches out his arms and tilts his head to
heaven.

“Praise Jesus. Praise Jesus! Praise Him and all the
angels!”

The cocker spaniel barks.

Four men
with droopy eyes glowered at Sydowski and Turgeon from the computer screen.
Each was a Caucasian in his late forties. Dark rumpled hair. They could have
been brothers.

“Best composites I could get.” Beth Ferguson’s
concentration was glued to the screen.

She was the police artist who helped develop the
SFPD’s computerized image-enhancing system for missing children, criminals, and
suspects. She kept her auburn hair in a beehive, popular at the time of her
wedding. Partial to Beechnut gum, she snapped it absentmindedly. Turgeon loved
her earrings, tiny silver handcuffs.

Beth’s office was cluttered with computers, monitors,
and sketches. She could remove the face-tight masks of some suspects
photographed by security cameras. Her success rate at producing likenesses was
eighty-six percent. Enlarged, facially aged pictures of JFK and Elvis adorned
one wall.

“Now, without beards.” Beth tapped her keyboard,
making the four men clean shaven. Their heads rotated. Beth swiveled to another
computer, hit some commands, and the screen showed each man’s full-body
composite, with her estimates of height, weight, body type, hair, and eye
color.

“I put him a six feet even, 160 to 180 pounds, medium
build, dark hair and dark eyes.”

Beth yawned. She had put in several seventeen-hour
shifts drafting sketches from witness descriptions until she saw the suspect in
her dreams. And, as she had done thousand times over the past year, she
reviewed the fuzzy Polaroid of little Tanita Marie Donner, alive and naked,
held by a man wearing a black hood and black gloves. It took every degree of
clinical coolness Beth could muster to extract details from the fragment of
tattoo visible on the man’s forearm. All she could glean was a bit of flame.
She was frustrated by the hood. Too loose fitting. Had the man been wearing a
tight-fitting ski mask, she could have produced vital facial attributes. This
morning, when she felt had done all she could, she called Sydowski and Turgeon.

“Before I go any further,” she said, “I’ve got bad
news and worse news.”

“Worse news first,” Sydowski said.

“I can’t compare the Donner suspect in the Polaroid
with the suspect in Danny Becker’s kidnapping. I’ve tried everything, Walt.
Whether these two creeps are the same guy or not is anybody’s guess.”

“What’s the bad news?” Turgeon said.

“Because of so many different perspectives and
descriptions of Danny Becker’s abductor, my composite is weak. Thirty percent
accuracy tops. Watch. I’ll take the most common characteristics of these
fellows and give you your suspect, or fifty percent of him.”

Beth typed a command, the four faces were instantly
replaced on the computer screen by one. A saggy-eyed, grim-faced Caucasian with
arching eyebrows in his late forties and bearded. He was a man either haunted
by remorse or devoid of it, Sydowski thought.