His Right Hand Read online

I followed her downstairs, refusing to offer any platitudes. Everything was not going to be all right. I did not believe that this was God’s will. I didn’t know that something good would come out of this. I knew people said that it was in circumstances like this that you should pray most fervently, but I couldn’t feel any connection to God at the moment.

  In the living room by the door, Emma hugged Alice and kissed the top of her head. Then she stood by William and held out her hand. It was the strangest thing. Instead of hugging him, she shook his hand and then told him she loved him and hoped he had a good day at school. After that, the two teenagers went out the door to walk down to the bus stop.

  “Is he uncomfortable with you hugging him?” I asked, though I knew it was an insignificant thing to talk about at a time like this. I had hugged and kissed all five of my sons before school every day, all through high school, whether they wanted it or not. I’m sure there had been days when they wished that I wouldn’t, but I had ignored that completely. Boys needed physical affection just as much as girls did.

  “He’s too old for that kind of thing,” Emma said. “Carl had me stop hugging or kissing William when he turned twelve. Carl said that once William was a deacon, he needed to start learning to be a man. Carl . . .” Her lower lip started to shake, and then she collapsed on the floor, right there in front of me.

  I tried to get her back to her feet, thinking to at least help her to the couch in the front room. But despite her size, Emma was quite capable of resisting me. Apparently determined to weep where she was, she wrapped herself into a ball. All I could do was fold one arm around her. I did not want her to feel alone. Sobs ripped through Emma, her whole body convulsing.

  “I’m here,” was all I said to her. I didn’t know if I was making anything better. I felt obliged to stay but found my thoughts wandering as she cried and cried. Did Emma have any idea who might have wanted to murder her husband? I wanted to make a list of suspects, but I didn’t know where to start. What could Emma tell me about Carl’s business life? But she would surely not want to talk about that now. She didn’t even know he had been murdered yet.

  Finally, Emma got to her knees and I was able to pull her to the kitchen table. I started on some hot oatmeal with cinnamon and raisins, and served her some hot cocoa as it was cooking.

  “I still can’t believe he isn’t going to come through the door any minute and tell me all of this is a big mistake.” Emma stared down at the liquid in the mug.

  “I’m sorry. I know it’s hard, but he isn’t coming back, Emma.” Maybe once she’d seen the body and identified it, that would help her mind to stop playing tricks on her.

  “I know. He’s gone and I have to get used to living my life without him.”

  “It might be time for you to think about what would be appropriate for the funeral,” I said. If I could get her to think about something other than her own sadness, it might be good for her.

  “No. Not yet. I can’t do that right now.” She put out a stricken hand and I immediately regretted the suggestion. I was pushing her too hard, which was not what I was here for.

  “Kurt can take care of it, of course.” How many funerals was Kurt going to preside over during his term as bishop? Too many.

  “William should speak. Carl would have wanted that.” Her voice was strained but sure now.

  “If he’s up to it, I’m sure that will be fine with Kurt. But you needn’t put pressure on him. I’m sure Kurt will be able to speak personally about Carl. He and Tom deRyke both knew him very well.”

  “William was his son,” she said firmly, straightening so she could look me in the eye.

  “Of course. I’ll tell Kurt and see what he thinks.” As the bishop of the ward, Kurt wasn’t obliged to do exactly what the family asked of him if the funeral was held in the chapel of our meeting house, where he presided. But of course he would want to be conscious of their wishes. If William was up to speaking, I suspected Kurt would encourage him to do so.

  There was a long silence as I tried to think what else I could do to offer comfort to Emma. How was it possible that there had been so much violence and tragedy in our ward in one year? Was it a sign of some sin or just random reality? Violence could happen anywhere. Why not here?

  “Is it terrible of me?” asked Emma, looking down at her hands.

  “Is what terrible?” I focused on her once more, as she sat at the island that bordered the dining room, turning the mug in her hands again and again.

  “I feel sad, but I also feel relieved. I don’t think he ever loved me as much as I loved him. He hurt me so many times. He didn’t even know he was hurting me.”

  I was a little startled, and I couldn’t just let her comment pass. “Did he hit you, Emma?” I asked.

  “What? No. No! I didn’t mean that.” She waved the thought away. “He would never have done that. You don’t know Carl at all if you could think that. He would never strike a woman. You should have heard him talk to William about that, ever since William was two years old. He was never allowed to strike his sister.”

  Yes, and there were men who did not practice what they preached.

  “He never hit me, Linda. Never.” She had risen to her feet, and I worried I had upset her, but she was reaching for a washcloth and began to wipe down the counters.

  “Here, Emma, let me.” I tried to take it from her, but she evaded me by going around to the other side of the island. “I only meant that Carl had expectations,” she said, eyes on the Formica she was scrubbing. “Sometimes they were hard for me to live up to. Everything had to be done in a particular way. He followed every commandment, every rule set by the church, every suggestion by the prophets. We read scriptures every morning before the children went to school, even if he was ill, or I was. We said family prayers morning and night. If that meant we had to stay up late for the kids to get home, we stayed up late.

  “We always had a year’s supply of food. If I used some of it, I had to replace it immediately. That same day. We had Family Home Evening every Monday night. We went to church together every Sunday. We went to every extra service project and stake supplemental meeting, and weekly temple service. We never went on vacation because it would have interrupted our church service.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I see.” Did I? Was this a case of taking commandments too far? Or was there something more going on here? Mental illness, perhaps?

  “He was so much more than I was.” Emma had put down the washcloth and was chewing at a fingernail. “How will I cope when I’m alone? I’m not strong enough. And if anything happens with the children, if they leave the church or face any problems, I will always think it was my fault, because I was less diligent than Carl was. He’s gone and it’s because I didn’t deserve him anymore. It’s a test.”

  “It’s not a test. God doesn’t make tests like that.” If He did, He wouldn’t be God. At least not the kind of God that I could worship.

  “And I’m relieved,” she choked out. “A part of me is glad that I will never have to iron his shirt with starch in the morning before church, that I’ll never have to polish his shoes. I will get more sleep, I will worry less, and be able to spend time watching movies he would never have let me watch. That’s the kind of person I am. That’s why God punished me by taking him away from me.” She let go of the washcloth and tears streamed down her face.

  I slammed a hand onto the counter. It made her jump, but I needed her to pay attention to me. It was important. “No, Emma. He didn’t punish you. Something terrible happened and you’re out of sorts. I don’t know how you will feel about Carl when this is all over, but now is the worst time to decide. Your mind is still reeling. Give yourself some time. Be kind to yourself, Emma. You’re a good person. You’re innocent in all of this.”

  She nodded, still looking startled, and picked up the washcloth again. I wasn’t sure she’d really processed what I said.
r />   An hour later, one of Emma’s visiting teachers, Karen Behring, came to relieve me, and I went home. I still hadn’t told Emma that Carl had been murdered.

  That evening, Kurt spent a couple of hours on the phone with the stake president, who had some pull with the police and city government. President Frost had insisted that Emma Ashby was not to be asked to identify her husband’s body in her current fragile state. He felt strongly that it was the duty of the priesthood of our ward to do such a difficult job to protect the more delicate sensibilities of the women.

  I could tell that Kurt was upset about the stake president’s interference, and he tried several times to point out that it was better to allow the police to do their job unimpeded, but President Frost demanded to know how Kurt would feel if after he died the priesthood members left behind in his ward were not taking good care of his wife in his place.

  So Kurt ended up spending a couple of hours down at the police station, identifying Carl Ashby’s body himself. He came home late, tight-lipped, and went into his office. He didn’t come to bed until nearly dawn, and he slept in until ten o’clock the next morning, which was a rarity for Kurt, even on a weekend.

  Chapter 6

  On Sunday morning, Kurt came home from church only a few minutes after he’d left, which was about 7 a.m. He was dressed in his suit, white shirt, and tie. His hair, thinning on the top, still glistened from his recent shower. I noticed it was getting a little long. I hoped that he had simply gotten too busy for a haircut and that this wasn’t his new look. I had no intention of being married to a man with a comb-over.

  “What is it? Forget something?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “The police haven’t finished with the building yet. I didn’t even think to ask about that, which was stupid of me. They’ve had it closed up for nearly three days. But I went over today to open up and there were officers stationed at the doors around the building, telling people they couldn’t go in. When I finally demanded to talk to someone, they told me they hadn’t finished processing the scene. There were so many samples to collect because of all the people that have been in and out of the church.”

  “So what are you going to do?” I asked. Three wards met in that church building every Sunday, with roughly five hundred people in each ward. It was going to be hard to find anyplace else to shift us to.

  “I called President Frost, in case the other bishops didn’t know about the problem already.”

  “I guess he might have to just cancel church for everyone,” I said. I tried to remember the last time that had happened and couldn’t. Even when we’d had a terrible windstorm a few years ago, the wards up north, where it had been particularly bad, still had sacrament meeting—although they then dispersed to take care of the storm wreckage. The massive hierarchy of the Mormon church is very capable in emergency situations. There are phone trees, and everyone is assigned someone to look after them and report back to a higher authority. We had lists of lists, not just for the dead to be baptized and counted, but for the living, too.

  “I’d hate to cancel,” Kurt said. “I don’t want rumors to fly about danger in the neighborhood. We should all go about our regular schedules and stay calm.

  “Maybe we could meet in the bowery?” I suggested. The bowery was an outdoor venue with picnic tables and a pavilion. It was noisy as well as rather public, but we could probably manage one meeting there, in a pinch.

  Kurt’s eyes lit up. “That’s a very good idea. I’ll go call the stake president again. You can go back to sleep.” He bustled out of the room.

  But I couldn’t, in fact, go back to sleep. I tried for a while, then sighed and got up to take a shower and get dressed for church.

  Kurt joined me in the kitchen to eat some of the eggs I scrambled up for breakfast.

  “So?” I said.

  He took a bite and shook his head. “President Frost called the chief of police and he thinks that they should have everything they need by noon. So the plan is now to have shortened meetings in our own ward building in the afternoon. We’ll be starting first.”

  I wondered about President Frost’s relationship with the police. Was it a good thing or not? In emergency situations, Mormons have a tendency to call ward members in authority rather than the police. I’d heard that Elizabeth Smart’s parents had done that when she was kidnapped, which had made it far more difficult for the police to find clues; the DNA evidence at the scene of the kidnapping had been contaminated by several dozen members of the priesthood quorums. This sort of thing happened over and over again—in robberies, kidnappings, and rape cases. No one intended to circumvent the law, but Mormons trusted other Mormons in their community more than they trusted government authorities.

  “It sounds like it’s all settled,” I said. “But you still look worried.”

  “I just hope that it goes smoothly. If the police are late, it will make the schedule difficult. And we can’t have any of our other meetings with the leadership today.”

  “I’m sure you’ll manage. You know how to run things. It isn’t as if you’re a new bishopric.” As soon as I said the words, I regretted them because I realized that there wasn’t a full bishopric anymore, not without Carl. “What are you going to do about your second counselor?”

  “President Frost told me to pray about who to replace Carl with, because he says I need to have a full bishopric up and running again soon. But I’ve prayed and prayed and I just don’t have a feeling about anyone yet,” Kurt said, shaking his head. “I have to wait on that. When God tells me who the right man is, I’ll listen. But for now, I guess we all have to accept being in mourning.”

  Had he prayed to find out who the murderer was? No, probably not. He wouldn’t feel that was his stewardship, and it probably wasn’t.

  “You and Tom can manage for as long as it takes, I’m sure,” I said, trying to sound supportive. It would mean more time that he was gone from home, but I was getting used to that by now.

  “For a while,” he said. He only ate half a piece of toast, then returned to his office. I checked on him an hour later and found him staring vacantly at the wall.

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  “Not really,” he said.

  For Kurt to admit that he was struggling was pretty big. He had been very close to Carl, closer than he was to anyone else in the ward, probably. He had lost a dear friend, and even if he was good at soldiering on, at some point he was going to have to stop and simply mourn. “Is there anything I can do for you?” I asked.

  “Come sit with me?” he said.

  So I pulled a folding chair up to his desk and held his hand in silence for a while.

  He let out a long breath, and then nodded. “Thank you, Linda.”

  It was my cue to go, I guess. As I left, I could hear him getting down on the floor to kneel. More prayer. I hoped he got the answers he needed. He headed out for church about fifteen minutes before I did.

  By the time I arrived on foot a few minutes before noon, there was no sign of the police. Instead of going straight to the chapel, I made for the room where we had found Carl’s body and opened the door. I wrinkled my nose at the faint antiseptic smell and ran a finger along the walls. It was very clean. No hint of feces. No scent of death. The chairs were folded against the wall. I pulled one out and sat on it.

  I should be in the chapel with everyone else, if for no other reason than for Kurt to see that I was there. But I needed to do my own mourning, I suppose. It felt right to come back here, to say a few final words to Carl. Carl had been a friend, even if he hadn’t been a close one. I was going to miss him.

  I took a breath and let my mind settle. I closed my eyes. Then I said softly the only words that came to me: “I’m so sorry.”

  A moment later, I felt it. A hand on my shoulder. Or—not a hand, really. A warmth.

  “Carl?” I said, eyes still closed.<
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  My whole body went all pins and needles. I wanted to leave and I wanted to stay, both at the same time.

  I thought about when I had been an atheist, how I would have explained this feeling. Just a physical response to fear. Some aftereffect of being so close to a dead person. I wanted him to be here, and so he was here.

  “Help,” I heard in my ear. It wasn’t a normal voice. It was like a strange, belled instrument. It felt crazy for me to believe that Carl could actually speak to me from beyond the grave. Was this just what I wanted to believe was possible? Nonetheless, I responded as if it were him.

  “Carl? Help who?” Emma? His children? Carl himself? I felt no answer, and the room suddenly seemed cold. Was this just reality setting in, or was this what it felt like when a spirit left a space?

  I shook myself. I had to act rationally, as if nothing had happened. And really, even if that had been Carl’s voice I’d heard, what did it mean? It wasn’t as if he’d told me anything useful. I’d never felt a spirit speak to me before. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. Unnerved, mostly.

  Eventually, I stumbled into the chapel and somehow managed to make it through the meeting despite feeling weak and trembly. Had it really been Carl’s spirit in that room talking to me? And if it was, what could I do to help?

  Mormons believe that spirit prison and spirit paradise (the way stations before resurrection) are right here on this earth, but invisible to us. So we believe strongly in contact with the spirits of the dead. There are several prophets who have been visited by spirits of the dead to tell them what they should do. The most famous was when Wilford Woodruff had a Charles Dickens-esque visitation by the spirits of the signers of the Declaration of Independence and some other early presidents of the United States who were annoyed that Mormon temple work had not yet been done for them, and demanded that it be carried out forthwith.

  But it happened to normal people, too, not just prophets. Many Mormons feel they have dreams or other visitations by their own dead ancestors, asking for temple work like baptisms for the dead to be done. When my daughter, Georgia, died, I was counseled to go to the temple in hopes of seeing her and knowing that she was still living on the other side. I tried, but never had any distinct impression of her.