The Parable of the Mustard Seed Read online

You should, John wanted to say. And the amount of hate I have for you should give you fucking nightmares.

  Analise sat back in her chair. “Yes. You were there. You were very angry all the time.”

  “I was,” John agreed. “Because I was the one who pulled your son out of that tank after Leon Harrison beat him almost to death.”

  Liz jabbed him in the thigh under the table. A warning to rein himself in.

  Analise shook her head again. “I didn’t know about that.”

  John had always doubted that was true. And he’d always wondered, on the slim chance that it was, if she would have cared anyway.

  “Tell me about Simon,” Liz said. “What sort of kid was he?”

  Analise appeared almost puzzled by the question. “I don’t know. I didn’t know him. The children were raised collectively by some of the other brothers and sisters. I didn’t have much to do with them.” She trailed off for a moment before collecting herself again. “I was told he and Caleb were sinful, and in need of correction.”

  John tensed at even hearing her say that name. She had no right to say that name, especially when she wrapped it in evasion and bullshit.

  I was told.

  I don’t know.

  I haven’t done anything wrong.

  Everything with these people was about shifting blame, then and now.

  Liz leaned forward slightly, wearing the friendly, sympathetic smile she always did. John knew it was a lie. Liz was a hell of a fucking poker player too. She could bluff anyone. “Look, we know you didn’t have anything to do with Simon’s disappearance.”

  Analise’s gaze flicked to John and then back to Liz. “Simon ran away.”

  “He didn’t, though,” Liz said, her tone still soft. “Look at it logically, Analise. Caleb said that Simon was dragged out of that tank. If he wasn’t already dead, he was at least unconscious. He didn’t run away. He couldn’t have.”

  “Caleb’s a liar,” Analise said.

  John tried to swallow down his rising anger. How fucking dare she?

  “Children lie,” Analise said. “You must know that.”

  “In my experience,” Liz said evenly, “it’s adults who lie the most.”

  Analise lifted a trembling hand to the collar of her blouse, and plucked at the fabric for a moment. “I don’t know why you’re asking me this again after all this time. I don’t know anything about what happened to Simon. If Caleb says that’s what happened and you believe him, why are you even asking me?”

  Because Caleb had gone to pieces on the witness stand once before, and he would again. Because the Children of Galilee hadn’t just killed Simon that night, they’d also broken Caleb into a million shattered pieces.

  “Because we want to know exactly who was involved,” Liz said. “And this is your chance to clean the slate. Isn’t that what religion is all about? Cleaning your slate?”

  “I’ve made my peace,” Analise said, raising her chin in a challenging gesture that reminded John so much of Caleb that he felt like he’d been gut-punched. “With God, and with the justice system.”

  John clenched his teeth as rage coursed through him and he struggled not to show it on his face. What about Caleb’s peace, or Darren’s, or even John’s? Analise Fletcher had no fucking right to put everything behind her and sleep soundly at night when she’d left so much destruction in her wake. He wanted her to hurt as much as she’d hurt others.

  Where was Caleb right now? Back in a fucking psych ward because this woman, his mother, had handed him over to monsters.

  Analise’s gaze flicked to John again, and she jolted. She looked back to Liz again. “I don’t think I want to answer any more questions, thank you.”

  Liz was silent for a moment, and then she nodded. “Okay.”

  For all of Analise’s smiles, John knew they’d get nothing else out of her. Jesus, he hoped there’d be enough to arrest her at the end of this. If he even got a hint that she’d known about Simon’s death and was covering for it, he’d charge her with obstruction first, and then conspiracy, and then whatever the fuck else he could think of. She could kiss her parole goodbye for starters, and hopefully this time she’d rot in prison.

  “I’ll type up your statement and have you sign it,” Liz said. “You can wait in here if you like.”

  Analise nodded warily.

  John walked out of the room without acknowledging her. His heart was racing and his skin felt clammy. He dug his phone out of his pocket, and headed down the corridor to the meal room.

  Darren answered on the fifth ring. “John.”

  “Darren.” John leaned against the wall of the meal room, closing his eyes. He hadn’t been sure Darren would answer. “How’s Caleb?”

  “He’s still in the mental health unit,” Darren said. His words were clipped, and there was an edge of coldness to his tone that John had never heard from him before.

  John kept his eyes closed. The chill blast from the air conditioning settled on his clammy skin. Across the room, the fridge hummed. “Is he okay?”

  “I’m hoping they’ll let him out tomorrow,” Darren said. “Dr. Harper has agreed to come and see him at the hospital and talk to the clinicians there.”

  “It’s the weekend,” John said. “They’ll want to clear their beds. They should let him out.”

  Darren didn’t answer for a while, and then he sighed. “Jesus, John. Tell me what the fuck you were thinking.”

  John swallowed. “I love him.”

  “But you can’t have him, John,” Darren said. His voice cracked. “Because if you have him, and you leave him…”

  “I won’t leave him.”

  “How can you say that? You don’t know that. You can’t.”

  John’s heart raced. “I won’t. I swear to you, I won’t.”

  Maybe it was a lie, but it didn’t feel like one.

  “You’re his friend, John. If he loses you, it’ll break him.”

  It would break John as well.

  “I know that.” Fuck, he’d never felt like such a selfish prick. “But I want him.”

  Darren raised his voice. “What you want isn’t the issue here!”

  “I know.” John knocked his head back against the wall. “But what about what Caleb wants?”

  Darren was silent for so long that John pulled the phone away from his ear to check the call was still connected.

  “Darren?”

  “I don’t know,” Darren said, his voice faltering. “I’m sorry, John, but I just don’t know.”

  Which was better, John supposed, than being told to go to hell.

  “You mind if I visit him? I might be able to get down there this arvo.”

  “I can’t really stop you, can I?”

  “That’s not what I asked, Darren.”

  Another sigh. “Yeah, okay. If you get the chance, he’d probably like a visit.”

  John sagged in relief. “Thanks.”

  Darren ended the call.

  John’s coffee was cold by the time he got back to it, but he still relished the hit of caffeine.

  “Who’s next on the list?” he asked Liz when she came back into the office, chewing on a muesli bar.

  Liz hummed. “I’d rather leave Leon Harrison until last. I want to have something back on the ID of the body before we pull him in here, since we know he was definitely involved. And he knows it too, so he’d be an idiot not to ask for a solicitor.”

  John hummed in agreement. Leon Harrison wouldn’t come in for a chat. He’d need to be arrested on something. Same as Ben Quartermain, probably. They’d been Ethan Gray’s enforcers in the cult. They’d both been men who liked intimidating and hurting others, and Ethan Gray had given them the authority to do it.

  “What’s your read on Ethan Gray?” Liz asked, pulling out the chair beside John’s and sitting down.

  John took another sip of cold coffee. “That he’s a sad little man with a literal God complex.”

  “I wonder if eight years has changed that,” L
iz mused.

  “The parole board obviously thought so.”

  Liz snorted. “The parole board believes a lot of fairy tales.”

  She had that right.

  Liz shrugged. “It’s too late to drive to Toowoomba now, though. Maybe we should start at the bottom of the food chain anyway. See if any of the former members are willing to talk a bit more about what they saw now that they’re not busy singing Ethan Gray’s praises.”

  John checked his watch.

  “What? You have somewhere to be?”

  “I’m hoping to get to the Gold Coast this arvo,” John said. “To the hospital.”

  Liz’s face fell.

  “Yeah, Caleb didn’t take the news we’d found a body well.” John swallowed down the sudden lump in his throat. “He didn’t slit his wrists this time, so I guess that’s progress?”

  It was meant to be said lightly, but he couldn’t twist his mouth into a smile.

  “Is he okay?” Liz asked. “Jesus, John, because you know we need to reinterview him at some point.”

  “No,” John said. “He’s nowhere near ready for that. Not now.”

  “Okay.” Liz reached out and clasped his hand. Her gaze was hard, unfaltering, and her jaw was set. “You tell him we’ll get them, okay? You tell him that we’re not going to stop until we put them back behind bars where they belong.”

  John nodded. “Yeah. “His voice rasped and he swallowed. “I’ll tell him.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  A bead of sweat slid down the back of John’s shirt, and he tried his best to ignore it. The day was stinking hot. The sun beat down through the scattered gumtrees and baked the hard-packed ground. The ground was mostly dirt, though there were a few clumps of stingy grass here and there, dotted between the buildings of the compound.

  The Children of Galilee were a weird bunch. They were clustered around their drab little church—more of an old shed than anything else—watching while the police went through the place. Their kids were in a separate group, sitting in the scant shade of a line of ghost gums. Someone had given the kids bottles of water.

  John had already been through the main buildings—there were definitely no signs these kids were being given an education, let alone three square meals a day, and the communal dormitory gave John pause too—and now he was checking the outbuildings. He swung the bolt cutters in his hand as approached what looked like an old corrugated iron water tank. Except if it had been a water tank in a past life, it certainly wasn’t now: there was a door cut into the side of it, chained and padlocked shut. Some sort of storage?

  John cut the chain and wrenched the door open.

  The stench hit him first, and he backed away to let a cloud of blowflies free.

  And then he looked, and then he saw.

  The body of a boy lay on the floor of the tank, covered in blood and filth, and John’s stomach churned.

  “Holy shit!” John dropped the bolt cutters. “Boss!”

  John was caught at work longer than he wanted. The inspector came in, and John screwed his courage and asked to speak to him in private. It hadn’t been as excruciating as he’d thought. The boss, for all that he rode them hard when it came to overtime, was a decent bloke. He had a hell of a poker face as well, and listened to John tell him about Jessie’s arrest and about his relationship with Caleb with absolutely no expression at all on his face. And then, just when John had been wondering exactly how much shit he was in, the boss had raised a single eyebrow.

  “Hmmm,” he said at last. “It’s not exactly ideal, is it?”

  John’s stomach clenched. “No, sir.”

  “Conflicts of interest come in three categories, John. Actual, potential, and perceived. Now so far we’re only looking at potential, and perceived. You’ve disclosed them, which means we can manage them. It’s not the end of the world, and it’s certainly not the end of your career.” And then he looked at his watch. “Now get the hell out of here. You’re not getting any bloody overtime out of me for this.”

  John fled gladly, at least part of the weight lifted from his shoulders.

  The rest of it belonged to Caleb.

  Visiting hours ended at eight, and John made it to the hospital just past seven, cursing the sluggish peak-hour traffic all the way along the Pacific Motorway. When he arrived at the hospital and made his way to the mental health unit, he was glad he was Caleb’s only visitor. He wasn’t sure that he was ready to face Darren yet, and he bet the feeling was mutual.

  Caleb had a private room, which was better that some of the other times he’d stayed here. John knew that Caleb wasn’t comfortable sharing his space with strangers, and it had always seemed unfair to make him do it when he was already spiralling after an episode. He was glad this time that Caleb had his privacy.

  Caleb was lying on his bed when John entered the room, and for a moment John worried he was still sedated, but Caleb looked over when John walked inside and his eyes were bright and his smile was quick. He sat up, crossing his legs on the bed.

  “John!”

  John reached him and leaned in for a hug. Caleb surprised him with a kiss instead; a sweet, chaste press of their lips while his hand closed on the muscle of John’s shoulder and squeezed.

  “Missed you,” Caleb said, his breath hot against John’s lips. Then he leaned their foreheads together, and sighed. “I’m sorry.”

  “I missed you too,” John told him. “And you have nothing to be sorry about.”

  Caleb moved back at last, his mouth pulled down into an unhappy line. “I told Dad we were sleeping together.”

  “We were going to tell him anyway.”

  Caleb raised his eyebrows and snorted. “Not like that!”

  No, not like that.

  John sat on the bed beside him, and took his hand. “Well, it’s out in the open now, and that’s not a bad thing. We’ll figure out the rest as we go along.”

  Caleb leaned against him. “Was he really mad though?”

  “Pretty mad,” John said. “At me though, not at you.”

  Caleb tensed.

  “What?”

  “That’s just it,” Caleb muttered. “It’s like I don’t have a mind of my own, you know? Like any bad decision I make—and I don’t mean us—is never my fault because I’m just messed-up little Caleb who can’t be expected to get anything right.”

  “He’s overprotective sometimes,” John said.

  “I get that.” Caleb traced a circle on John’s palm with his finger. “And I know why he’s like that. I mean, I self-harm. I know I don’t always cope well with stressful situations. Or any situations, whatever. I know that sometimes my brain just flips a switch and it’s like I’m not even there anymore. I know why he can’t trust me to be safe, but shouldn’t he trust you?”

  John’s heart ached. “I don’t think that’s what this is, Caleb. It’s not about trust. It’s...” He shook his head, and thought again of the snarl of traffic on the motorway. “It’s like you’re trying to cross a busy road, and every car on it means your chances of getting hit are higher. And your dad knows he can’t stop every car from driving down that road, but if he thinks there’s one he can stop, then of course he’s going to try. Because even if it’s just one, then that gives you a better chance to make it to the other side. And I’m the car he should have stopped, you know?”

  Or, rather, John was the car Darren shouldn’t have had to stop, because John should have known better than to be on that dangerous road to begin with. But that was for John and Darren to work out, not Caleb.

  Caleb was silent, drawing another shape on John’s palm.

  “I think it’s okay that you and your dad have different perspectives on this,” John said. His throat ached, and he swallowed down a lump. “As long as we can all figure it out together.”

  Caleb bit his lip and nodded. His gaze cut to John’s face. “Dr. Harper is coming to see me tomorrow. I guess we’ll talk about how to talk to Dad.” His mouth quirked faintly. “I just don’
t like feeling this way. I want you and Dad to be friends again.”

  “Hey.” John reached out and gripped his chin. Turned Caleb’s face gently toward him. “That’s not on you, okay? You let us sort that out. Me and your dad are both old enough and ugly enough to fight our own battles.”

  Caleb nodded, his expression softening, and whispered, “Okay.”

  John released his chin, trailing his fingertips along Caleb’s jawline. “Are they treating you okay in here?”

  “The food sucks.” Caleb smiled and ducked his head. “But the nurses are nice.” He tilted his head. “Hey, why are you wearing a tie? I thought you didn’t have to work again until Tuesday.”

  “Sometimes I think you know my roster better than I do,” John teased.

  Caleb’s cheeks pinked up. “I have a vested interested in knowing when you’ll be free, John.”

  John laughed quietly. “I got called in today, that’s all.”

  “On a Saturday though?”

  John forced a smile. Forced the memory of Analise Fletcher and her blame-shifting out of his mind. “Excuse you. I’m indispensable!”

  Caleb smiled in return, but it was brittle and uncertain.

  “Hey,” John said. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll tell you what I can, okay? You and your dad.”

  Caleb nodded, and hunched his shoulders slightly. He withdrew his hand from John’s, and crossed his arms over his abdomen. “You think it’s Simon though?”

  “Yeah,” John said. “We’re pretty sure of it.”

  Caleb closed his eyes. For a moment he was as still and silent as though he’d been carved from marble, and John felt a fleeting rush of irrational panic that somehow Caleb had gone, been replaced by cold, unyielding stone. Then Caleb’s breath shuddered out of him. When he opened his eyes again, they shone with tears. “Why did he have to die, John? Why couldn’t he have held on?”

  “I don’t know.” John folded Caleb into an embrace. He smoothed his hand up and down his trembling spine. “I wish I could answer that, mate, I really do. It’s not fair. It’s just not fair.”

  He wasn’t telling Caleb anything new. Who knew life wasn’t fair better than Caleb? He only hoped he was offering him some comfort.