“Moore’s daughter was working in a clothing store. Two hours before closing, I walked in and hid in one of the dressing rooms. While I was in there, I took out a piece of paper and I wrote her a note.” Mickey removed from his pocket a worn and smudged piece of paper, creased into quarters. He unfolded it carefully, as if it were a fragile page from an ancient manuscript. “This very one, in fact.” The reverend adjusted his glasses to examine it closely. In black and red inks Mickey had drawn a crude but anatomically accurate heart, a coiled snake, a pair of hands (one pointing to the heavens), and the initials H O G. The names of six doctors were written in black and crossed out with a red pen. Last on the list, but not crossed out, was the name “Dr. Davis Moore.” Finally, in block letters, was a Bible verse everyone at the table recognized:
SEE! THE MAN HAS BECOME LIKE ONE OF US, KNOWING WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD! THEREFORE, HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO PUT OUT HIS HAND TO TAKE FRUIT FROM THE TREE OF LIFE, AND THUS EAT OF IT AND LIVE FOREVER.
All the words were in black ink except for HE MUST NOT BE ALLOWED TO… LIVE, which was in red.
Mickey said, “I planned to give this to Moore’s daughter, Anna, when the store thinned out toward closing-”
“Anna Kat,” Harold corrected. Mickey stared at him. “Her name was Anna Katherine. They called her Anna Kat.”
In the ensuing pause Reverend McGill took a loud sip of root beer while Mickey fixed a displeased stare on Harold Devereaux. Harold squinted unapologetically in reply and Mickey continued. “While I was writing this, Anna – Anna Katherine – snuck into the changing room next to me with a boy I guessed was about her age. Sixteen or seventeen. I never saw his face and they couldn’t have known I was there. I listened as they sniggered and shushed one another, and I could see their clothes fall to the floor in the space between our stalls. I picked my legs up off the floor to be certain they wouldn’t see me and I sat very still as the boy pushed himself inside the Moore girl, their bodies slapping together with great violence. Occasionally they would slam loudly into the wall and I could hear him hitting her – slapping her, pinching her – and she responded each time with a muffled but ecstatic purr. So young and so self-loathing, it was everything I could do not to retch.
“When they had finished with one another, they dressed and the boy left the changing room first. I remember her saying good-bye in a hush, and I remember he didn’t reply. A minute or two later she returned to the sales floor, although I assume the boy was long gone by then. I got the impression these trysts were a naughty secret between them.
“I waited another half hour and then put on my gloves. I didn’t want there to be a lot of customers in the store and the place seemed quiet. I soon found out why. A storm had passed through and Anna Katherine had closed up for the night. Sent everyone home. She and I were alone. As you can imagine, I startled her a piece when I walked out of the dressing room, and in her face I could see thoughts occurring one after another. Foremost in her mind was the worry that I had heard her fornicating. I walked very close to her and she took a step back, but was trapped against the counter in the center of the store. My mouth was inches from the top of her head. I held up the note and I said, Your father might be innocent in the eyes of the law, but he still has to answer to the Hands of God. I put the note on the counter and I walked quickly to the door. The whole encounter lasted seconds. She couldn’t have picked me out of a two-man line-up.
“But I hadn’t counted on the door being locked.
“Before I could find the dead bolt, she kicked me hard in the back of my knee. I went down to the floor. She screamed, ‘You shot my father, didn’t you, you sonofabitch!’ I spun around and slapped her across the face. She fell backward and I started again for the door, but she said, ‘I know what you look like, asshole,’ and she reached for the phone. Before she could dial three numbers I smacked it out of her hand and I grabbed her arm and put my fingers around her neck, forcing her to the ground in the middle of the island where they keep the registers. As she went down, I felt her arm snap. She was too scared to cry out, so she just cried. I knelt beside her so we couldn’t be seen from the street, but the snow was coming down fast now and there weren’t many people out. We crouched there for minutes probably, my grip just tight enough to keep her from fighting. She had seen me well enough by now, and if the FBI showed her a picture of Byron Bonavita, she’d be able to tell them I wasn’t him. My best cover would be blown. The entire Hands of God operation would be compromised. I looked into her eyes and this time I saw more rage than fear. And here, Reverend, is where we come to both the unintended consequences, as well as the greater good. I made a choice – not a choice, really, but a necessary decision – and I squeezed her throat shut until she stopped breathing, and then I kept it shut for a few minutes more.
“Once she was unconscious, I tore open her blouse. I knew she had just been with this fellow, and I thought I could make it look like rape. Fortunately, the boy had done most of my work for me. She had marks on her breasts where his hands had squeezed her too tight. I cut open her jeans, and there were marks on her thighs and on her ass where he had slapped and punched and pinched her. I checked to make sure she was dead, retrieved the note from the counter, and I walked out into the street, where the blizzard covered the boot tracks behind me.”
Three of the children raced around the corner of the house where Mickey had been digging earlier. One trailed the other two, pumping a multicolored water pistol that wasn’t shaped anything like a gun, but nevertheless boasted a range of twenty or thirty feet. In the quiet around the picnic table, you could hear the water spitting out the end of the pinhole barrel.
“A child,” the reverend said finally. “My God, a child.”
“Unintended consequences. The greater good,” Mickey said. “By all accounts, Moore became obsessed with his daughter’s murder. His wife eventually committed suicide with a handful of pills. Another man was killed in some crazy accident involving Moore in Oklahoma or Nebraska someplace. The wheels were coming off his chassis. He finally had enough. He quit.
“This is the part of your work that you have refused to see, Reverend. This is what happens on the front lines of war. That night in the store, with my hand on the Moore girl’s throat, I could have backed away. If I had, my entire mission, my entire twenty-year mission, would have been compromised before it began. There would have been no pressure on the cloners and the experimenters, the Frankensteins and Mengeles of modern science. There would have been no fear. No surrender. You wouldn’t be sitting here, preparing your speech, waiting for the coming day when you can claim victory on the cable news networks.
“Over the years there have been other times when so-called innocents died at my hand. These were people who got in the way. Collateral damage, the U.S. military calls it. But the Lord never again asked me to make a decision like the one I made that night in Chicago. I believe the Lord tested me that day, the way He tested Abraham. Only, the Lord never stopped my hand because the Lord knew what was to occur in the wake of that girl’s death. For Him, the all-knowing, there are no unintended consequences; there is only the greater good.
“You looked horrified when I described to you the death of Anna Katherine Moore, and you should have. It was a horrible thing. She was a pretty girl, with much promise, no doubt. She had dreams and plans and people who loved her. I took all of that away with a squeeze of this hand. You should know, then, that it did not make me glad to do it. The boy she had sex with that night took pleasure in her pain, but I did not. Nor did I take pleasure in the deaths of any of the doctors on Harold Devereaux’s list. I killed because I was called upon to kill by God, and despite that holy mission, every murder I committed under its charter was a sin. I fully expect to be sent to hell for them without the ultimate gift of God’s grace. If he condemns me to hellfire, I will accept that mission without anger, because there is honor in doing as He bids, even if what He wishes for you is eternal suffering and everlasting shame.
“As for you, Reverend McGill, you have rejoiced in my acts, and yet you feel that you have not sinned because it was not you who pulled the triggers, who set the bombs, who crushed the Moore girl’s larynx. But it is God who has called all of us to this task.” Mickey clutched the list in his right hand and collapsed it into his fist. “I did not choose to kill Dr. Ali, or Dr. Denby, or Dr. Friedman, I was put to the task, as you were put to yours. I have given my whole life to it. I have sacrificed for the sake of mankind, so that His will may be done. I don’t know why I was chosen, but I think it’s entirely possible that the Lord does not send innocents to hell for the sake of the greater good, but rather chooses sinners, like me, and asks them to commit sins on His behalf.
“You see, the Lord expresses himself in paradoxes. Do you know what a paradox is, Reverend McGill? A paradox is both itself and its opposite at the same time. By definition it can exist only by the will of God. I believe the modern-day saints and the modern-day martyrs are examples of these paradoxes. Because in the war you and I are fighting, the war against contemporary secularism, you won’t find the saints sitting at the right hand of God. You will find the true saint, the true martyr, in the depths of hell. Because he will have given not just his life for the good of his fellow man, but he will have sacrificed his eternal soul.”
