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“We need to talk,” North said.
Clutching the doorjamb, Kingston seemed to consider it. Then he stepped back and let them inside.
It was about what Shaw had expected; his work with North regularly took them to places like Kingston Ezell’s apartment. Brown carpet that was flattened in tracks, where decades of feet had walked from the door to the kitchen, from the kitchen to the couch, from the couch to the bedroom. Dingy linoleum. Half-buried windows that let in a squinting light. There were always differences, of course. Someone, at some point, had painted the walls an olive color that had faded over the years. Maybe it had been Kingston, because the color seemed perfectly coordinated with a lamp with peacock feathers. The only other decorations were poster-sized art prints of Bible stories—everyone with big, ruddy, Germanic features, everybody looking like in between whatever they were doing in the Holy Land, they made streusel and schnitzel and drank a lot of beer.
Kingston directed them to a sofa in cream-colored polyester, and he took the matching loveseat. He looked worse in the apartment’s low light—yellow and wrinkled and old. When the old sofa set’s springs had stopped squeaking, quiet crept in. If the girl was still singingMoana, Shaw couldn’t hear her anymore.
“You helped Gideon Moss kill those people,” North said. “That makes you an accessory. And in case you’re wondering, that makes you responsible for your brother’s death.”
Kingston shook his head, but he started to cry and covered his eyes.
North opened his mouth, but Shaw shook his head. “Kingston, what happened?”
Big shoulders shook. His breath had that raspy, struggling quality Shaw associated with a man trying to hold himself together and failing. After what felt like a long time, Kingston wiped his face.
“I didn’t know, ok?” The words sounded petulant, almost childish, and Shaw wondered about a man who spent all his time doing odd jobs for his pastor’s family, who drove an hour and a half to church, who had chosen—or made a series of choices, anyway—to live like this. “He wanted to talk to Adam. That’s all.”
“And you put them in contact,” North said.
“I didn’t know what he was going to do!”
“Who—” Shaw tried.
“He’s a good man, ok? He works so hard. He helps so many people. It’s—it’s a privilege to help him. To be part of that. I had no idea what he was going to ask. I still wouldn’t believe it, except—well, except for Adam.”
North glanced over; Shaw caught the look. He felt it too; whatever undercurrent they’d missed, it was swirling around beneath them, and Shaw didn’t like that at all.
“Go back to the beginning,” North said. “When did Gid ask you to put him in contact with Adam?”
Kingston’s slight hesitation suggested confusion, as though North had changed the subject unexpectedly. “You mean the prison ministry? I don’t know. Couple of years, I guess. That’s Gid’s pet project, ok? It keeps him out of Pastor Moss’s hair, and that’s about all anyone can ask with Gid.”
North was silent for so long that Shaw wondered if he might have to speak, but finally North said, “Keep going.”
Another of those confused pauses came. “He just said he wanted to talk to Adam. He said it was important. ‘Crucial to the ministry,’ that’s what he said. I figured it had something to do with the prison ministry, ok? Maybe they were going to expand. I figure maybe Gid did something right for once, and wouldn’t that make Pastor Moss happy. He—”
“Who?”
This time, Kingston blinked. “Pastor Moss. The young one.”
Jed, Shaw thought.
“Jed came to you,” North said, “and he wanted to talk to Adam?”
“Well, yeah.”
“When?”
No more than a few days ago, Shaw thought. As soon as the people in charge realized Dalton Weber had been arrested and, worse, was going to talk. As soon as they realized they were vulnerable.
But Kingston said, “Oh, a few months ago, I guess. More than that. Easter, I think. They still had the Easter stuff all over the sanctuary.”
North moved in his seat. He didn’t glance over at Shaw this time, but Shaw felt it, the connection as they both thought some variation of the same thing:What the fuck?
“He said he wanted to talk to Adam, ok? So, I said sure. And I thought that was it.”
“But?” North asked.
“Monday night, he called me. Pastor Moss doesn’t get flustered. You should see him up there, when he’s preaching, and the Holy Spirit comes upon him. It’s something.” Kingston paused as though savoring the thought. “But Monday, he sounded like he was at the end of his rope. ‘Where’s Adam?’ he said. Not hello or how are you or anything. I told him I didn’t know, and that’s the first time I ever heard him use the Lord’s name in vain. He told me to find him. So, I called Adam, went over to his house, couldn’t find him. I called Pastor Moss back and told him.”
