City of Peace Page 4

  Harley nodded. “Tell me what’s troubling you.”

  “My first wife was poison, so I poisoned her. My second wife was bringing me down, so I brought her down. There, I’ve confessed to God and to you. But you can tell no one, Pastor.”

  Harley was stunned by the revelation and wondered how he could possibly keep such a secret. But then a knock came on his door, and he opened it to see the middle-aged daughter of the man.

  “Is he telling you about killing his wives? I’m afraid he’s losing it,” she said as she escorted her father out of the room. But Harley was left shaken by the experience.

  Dirk was still eating and looking at his lunch companion, wondering why Harley had become so silent. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about the death of the Bayati girl. Changing the subject, he said, “That’s a nice place you’ve been given across the street. And what a great thing to have a dock of your own. Want to get a boat?”

  “Yes, I would. I’ve never been a boater, but I would be crazy not to take advantage of this.”

  Dirk told him about the boat that he kept down the river at the Halliburton Marina, and how he’d be happy to take Harley there and introduce him to the owner. “They get lots of people who trade in smaller boats for larger ones, so I’m sure they can find you something,” Dirk said.

  Harley was really beginning to like this guy, a much warmer version of his own military father, who had died decades earlier. Their conversation was interrupted by Dirk’s cell phone. “I’ve got to take this.” After listening for a few seconds, he apologized. “I’m sorry, Pastor, but I need to go. I’ve got to talk to my son, Matt. He’s FBI. I shouldn’t tell you this, but you’re clergy. Confidential, right? He’s been investigating the Bayatis.”

  CHAPTER 4

  The movers and their truck arrived in Occoquan on Wednesday afternoon, and Harley was waiting on the porch to meet them. They swarmed over the Victorian house for several hours, carrying furniture and boxes up the wrought-iron staircase on the side of the house, through the front door, and then into the various rooms of the three living levels.

  The first floor was an open-air carport held up by sturdy concrete pillars covered with brick. The second level contained a kitchen on the street side, a dining room in the middle, and a living room with a porch facing the river. The third floor had two bedrooms with full baths, and a laundry room between them. The fourth floor was narrower than the other two because of the steeply pitched roof, but it contained a storage room and a large guest suite with a porch overlooking the river. The townhouse was much smaller than his parsonage in Sterling, but it had more than enough room for a single man.

  After playing the role of traffic cop for several hours, Harley tipped the movers when they were finished. He surveyed the stacks of boxes throughout his house and realized that he would be unpacking for months. Although he had worked hard to downsize since hearing about his transfer to Occoquan, he knew that he had moved a ton of things that would still need to be sorted and discarded. The surplus furniture in Sterling had been no problem—several truckloads had been sent to Goodwill, and a number of items had been sold on Craigslist. All of Karen and Jessica’s clothing had been donated to the church clothing closet and made available to low-income neighbors. Since he couldn’t bear to sort through it himself, he asked for the assistance of several retired women from the church. They kindly boxed up all of the clothing and spirited it away. Even after the closets and chests had been emptied, a stray sock or scarf occasionally appeared, and Harley would well up with tears. He never dreamed that clothing could carry so much emotion.

  As Harley stood motionless inside the front door, not sure where to begin, the doorbell rang. There stood Leah Silverman, an old friend from Duke, holding two containers of Thai food. “Harley,” she said. “Welcome to the County of Prince William.”

  “Leah, come in.” She entered and placed the food on the kitchen counter, then gave Harley a hug. “I’m so sorry about Karen and your daughter. I really should have called or sent a card.”

  Leah was a couple of years younger than Harley and had been an undergraduate religion major when he was a student at Duke Divinity School. The two of them had gone on an archaeological dig in Israel in the mid-1980s, part of a team that discovered a beautiful mosaic in the town of Sepphoris. Harley wrote in his travel journal about her in May 1985:

  Arrived in Galilee. Visited city of Nazareth, hometown of Jesus, close to Sepphoris. Modern city is 70 percent Muslim and 30 percent Christian. Two groups cooperate. Tourism is booming, with visitors wanting to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. Our group visited Basilica of the Annunciation, a new church built over earlier Byzantine and Crusader-era churches. Thought to be site of childhood home of Mary, where angel announced that Jesus would be born. Question in the Gospel of John: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” My team is beginning to bond—five undergrads will be working in my square. So glad I’ll be digging with a cute girl named Leah.

  Leah was like a kid sister to Harley that summer, and they spent many weekends together, hitch-hiking to Haifa for the gardens or to Tel Aviv for the beach. She was a beautiful young woman with dark-brown hair and an olive complexion, very fit from playing tennis and racquetball, and always quick with a smile. Harley developed quite a crush on her during the dig and always assumed that the feelings were not returned because he was a Christian and she was a Jew. They drifted apart after their summer in Israel, but then reconnected after thirty years when all of the participants in the Duke digs got together for a reunion. Harley had brought his wife with him.

  “You live around here, don’t you?” he asked. “I remember you telling me that when I saw you at the Duke reunion.”

  “Yes, I’ve been in Occoquan ten years,” she said. “I’m the CEO of the Woodbridge Health Clinic, a nonprofit serving low-income residents. God, it was so good to see you down in Durham. I just cannot believe Karen was killed. I am so sorry, Harley. She was such a lovely person.”

  Harley just nodded. “I’m sorry too.”

  “One of my volunteers at the clinic is a member of your church, and she told me about your arrival. She said you were moving in here on Wednesday, and I guessed that you wouldn’t want to cook on your first night. So, I figured I would pick up some Thai and surprise you.”

  “Well, you succeeded,” said Harley. “Thank you.”

  “I can just leave the food here and go. Or, if you want some company, I can stick around.”

  “Company would be great.”

  Mealtimes were the loneliest part of his day since losing Jessica and Karen. Pointing to the dining room, he said, “I think there is a table under the boxes.” He moved a few to the floor while Leah dished the food onto paper plates. Harley tried not to stare. Leah was still fit and quite attractive. Her hair had turned silver and she had wrinkles around her eyes, but she was still the girl he had fallen for in the dirt of Israel.

  “Harley,” she said, as she put a plate of steaming noodles in front of him, “I am really sorry we lost touch. I would have liked to spend time with you and Karen and your daughter, especially since we were all in the DC area.”

  “Yeah, that would have been great, but work and family are so consuming.” He offered her a glass of wine, and when she said yes he pulled a bottle out of the bag he had packed for his first night in the new house. Pouring two glasses, he asked her, “Tell me what brought you here and what you’ve been up to.”

  “Mainly work. After Duke I went to Carolina for a master’s in public health.”

  “Traitor!” Harley blurted with a smile.

  “Yeah, I know,” she confessed. “But UNC was great for public health, especially health administration, and from there I worked my way up through a series of clinics in Greensboro, Richmond, and now Woodbridge.”

  “As long as you didn’t become a Tarheel,” Harley chided. “Coach K would never forgive you.”

  “Never. Blue Devils, forever.” After taking a sip of wine, she asked, “So ho
w about you? What brought you from Durham to Occoquan?”

  “The bishop,” Harley explained. “I met Karen on a blind date during my final year at Duke Divinity, and we got so serious that I wanted to be near her after graduation. She was living in Alexandria, so I sought out the Methodist bishop responsible for the DC area and pledged my allegiance to him. I moved to Virginia, we got married, and I started out as an associate pastor in Arlington. Next, I got a solo position in Annandale, then moved to Fairfax and finally Sterling. That was the peak.”

  Harley sipped his wine and sat quietly for a few moments. Leah just listened; she had always been a good listener.

  “After losing Karen and Jessica, I slid downhill to Occoquan. Now I’m just an unhappy old white guy with no future, no chance for advancement, nothing to look forward to. In other words, just like most other guys my age.”

  “This really isn’t the pits, Harley. Sure, Prince William is an ugly stepsister compared to rich counties like Fairfax and Loudoun, but there are some great people here. And Occoquan? Harley, this town is a gem!”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, except for the honor killing.”

  She flinched, and Harley could tell that the incident hit close to home.

  “No one knows what really happened there,” Leah said stiffly. “And even if it was a murder, one in a hundred years ain’t bad. In other neighborhoods around here, gang members are killing each other every month.”

  Harley knew she was right about Occoquan but still couldn’t help but feel that he had been demoted. On top of that, he looked around the region and saw progress for everyone around him—women, African-Americans, LGBTs, Asians, Latinos, immigrants from the Middle East. Everyone who was working hard was on the move, advancing, getting noticed. Not Harley. He was a middle-aged widower, a recently demoted white guy living alone. Enough self-pity. He changed the subject.

  “So, have you been single all these years?”

  “The past nine, yes,” she answered. “I met Pat in the early nineties, soon after I moved to Richmond. I was playing a lot of tennis, and we met at the racquet club. Things progressed quickly, so we moved in together and then bought a house. In 2006 Pat got leukemia. A clinical trial became available at NIH, and I found this job in Woodbridge so that we could be closer to the treatments. Pat fought hard . . .” Leah paused and took another drink of wine. “The love of my life. Gone so quickly.”

  Harley reached across the table and put his hand on hers. “I’m sorry.”

  “Well, you know what it’s like,” she said, with tears welling. “Death is a monster.”

  “Indeed it is.”

  Harley liked the feeling of her hand but didn’t want to send the wrong message. “More wine?” he asked as he lifted his hand and stood.

  “You were alone at the Duke reunion, with Pat gone, right? I’m sorry we didn’t get more caught up at that point.”

  “Well, the reunion was all about reliving our days on the dig, wasn’t it? Feeling young and alive, skinny and tan?”

  Harley smiled. “I have never been thinner than I was that summer.”

  “True that,” said Leah. “Getting up at four in the morning, having a first breakfast in the dining hall, digging for four hours, having a second breakfast on the dig site, digging for another three hours, and being done by noon. Not the typical schedule for a college student!”

  “But I’ll tell you,” Harley said, “I have never felt healthier. I wouldn’t mind getting up every day at four if I could be in bed by eight.”

  “Our world today just doesn’t allow it,” Leah lamented. “We bring our work home with us, get caught up on emails, and then unwind in front of the television. I’m lucky if I am asleep before eleven thirty.”

  “You and me both. When I get back from a church meeting at ten, I am usually so wound up that I cannot close my eyes before eleven. Junk TV and a glass of wine—or several glasses—are my bedtime rituals.”

  “Wild times in suburbia,” said Leah, lifting her glass. “I’ll never forget when we started to clear the dirt off of that mosaic. The artistry was exquisite. A piece of Roman art in the very heart of a Jewish community, with that beautiful woman, ‘The Mona Lisa of the Galilee.’ Changed what everyone thought of life in that ancient city.”

  “We did have a great time, didn’t we?” Harley opened another bottle of wine. “Remember when we went to the swimming pool in Nazareth? At the end of the day, we put our thumbs out to hitch a ride back to the dormitories.” Leah smiled as Harley refilled her glass. “A little pickup pulled over and the driver opened the door for you. He motioned for me to hop in the back. But then he sped off before I could climb in! I was terrified! I thought you were going to be raped and murdered!”

  Leah was touched by how raw his emotions still were, three decades later. “I was just chatting with the guy, oblivious to the fact that you weren’t in the truck.”

  “Well, I hope you had a good time,” said Harley. “I was a wreck.”

  “What did you do?” she asked, sipping her wine. “I kind of forget.”

  “I kept my thumb out, and fortunately caught another ride a few minutes later. When I got back to the dorms, I ran to see if you were okay.”

  “Which I was,” she said. “So sweet of you.”

  “I guess I shouldn’t have panicked. Galilee was pretty safe in those days. Everybody hitched rides, and no one got in trouble.”

  “Yeah, it’s different now. I was just reading a story online about Nazareth. Five Muslims arrested for declaring their allegiance to ISIS. The Christians of the city now worry that they are going to end up on the ISIS hit list.”

  “That’s not good,” said Harley.

  “No, it’s not. But it is not just ISIS that worries Christians. They are also concerned about extremism on the Jewish side. And that really makes me ashamed, as a Jew.”

  “I’m amazed you keep up with this stuff,” said Harley.

  “Well, I’m Jewish. What happens in Israel is important to me.”

  Harley stood. “If we are going to get serious, let’s at least get comfortable.” He pulled a couple of packing boxes off of a recliner and a couch in the living room and invited her to join him. Sitting comfortably in the living room, they continued to drink and talk.

  “So, what’s been happening from the Jewish side?” Harley asked.

  “A couple of summers ago, Jewish extremists firebombed the Church of the Multiplication, near the Sea of Galilee. Remember seeing that church, with the mosaic of the loaves and fish?”

  “Yes, I do. You say it was attacked by Jews?”

  “Extremists, yes,” said Leah. “The vandals wrote on the church walls, ‘False idols will be destroyed!’”

  “False idols? They think Christians have false idols? I never thought of myself as worshiping an idol.”

  “I guess you do, from their perspective.”

  Leah continued to talk about politics in Israel, and about her discouragement with the failure of the peace process. She was a bit intense, which Harley found simultaneously off-putting and intriguing, at least at first. Here she was, thousands of miles from Israel, feeling the tensions as personally as a Jew on the streets of Old Jerusalem. But gradually he became annoyed by her analysis, which seemed awfully detached from the pain of people like himself. She was beginning to sound like the Duke undergrad know-it-alls who had been so aggravating to him when he was in divinity school.

  “Mutual concessions are essential,” she insisted, blah, blah, blah. “But there is absolutely no trust between Israelis and Palestinians.” Sure, you are right, thought Harley, but what does all that have to do with me and what I have been through? Don’t you read about the acts of terrorism constantly being committed around the world?

  Harley poured the last of the wine. “Open another one?”

  “No, better not,” she said. “Tomorrow’s a work day.”

  As he sipped the last of his glass, Harley asked, “Leah, you seemed to react when I mentioned the killing of
the Bayati girl a while back. Are you close to that situation?”

  She thought for a moment. “Well, I don’t normally talk about this kind of stuff, but you are clergy—confidential, right? And the girl is dead, so I cannot hurt her. She was a patient at my clinic, and after her death the medical examiner asked for her records. I reviewed them before turning them over to him and saw that she had come to us for birth control.”

  “Sounds controversial,” said Harley, “especially in a traditional Muslim family.”

  “I would think so,” Leah replied. “I never heard any more from the ME, but I assume that the records could become evidence in the trial.”

  “So maybe her father found out and became angry,” Harley guessed. “That might support an honor killing.”

  “Or a lover’s quarrel,” Leah suggested. “Personal lives are messy. You know that as well as anyone.”

  They finished the wine, and when they got up they discovered that they were both a bit tipsy. “I don’t think I can drive,” Leah confessed. “I better call an Uber.”

  “No, just stay here,” insisted Harley. “It’s a mess, but I can make up a bed for you.”

  “Won’t the neighbors talk?” teased Leah.

  “Not if you take the walk of shame at sunrise.”

  “It’s a deal,” she said, and followed him up to the small bedroom on the next floor. They pulled some bedding out of a box and quickly made up the bed. “I’ll be out before morning,” she promised and then pecked him on the cheek. “Thanks, Harley.”

  He went to his larger bedroom down the hall, plopped down on his unmade bed, and as he drifted off to sleep he thought about how good it was to have a woman in the house. Just like old times.

  CHAPTER 5

  After two long days of unpacking and setting up his tiny office, Harley was ready for a break. He had carried a dozen boxes from his townhouse to Riverside Methodist Church, and spent hours arranging books on shelves and putting papers in his desk drawers and filing cabinets. He had even carved out time to prepare a worship bulletin for the Sunday service, and to write a sermon titled, “Can anything good come out of Occoquan?”