Chapter Eighteen
AFTER STRUGGLING FOR so long in a nonexistent relationship with her husband of nearly thirteen years, Cathy Smith realized she’d had taken all she could. Countless times, she had tried to get John’s attention. She tried to make his home life more pleasant and inviting. She tried to keep young Jack busy and out of John’s hair as much as possible. She had tried to be more loving, more expressive, but he treated her like a cardboard cutout. Nothing helped. John remained distant, and they argued constantly. And now he had moved to his office.
“John,” she said on the evening that everything came to a head, “I’m here day and night, taking care of you and your son, or looking after this house that you hardly use anymore. The very least you could do is to pay a little attention to your son. I don’t expect you to care about me anymore. I know you have other interests, and I—”
John seldom tolerated confrontation well, especially from his family. Drawing to his full height, he snapped, “Cathy, what’s wrong with you? I think you’re losing it!”
“Losing it? You think I’m losing it? Why do you think I’m losing it? Could it be because you’re not part of this family anymore? Could it be because you’re enjoying such a full and rich life with your pals downtown while Jack and I sit here day after day, waiting for you to give us a little time?”
“Cathy, will you please get a grip? Can’t you be serious?”
With that smug rebuke the level of tension in the room escalated. Cathy began to shake. “Serious, John? Is that what you want? Okay, try this. I’m not sure who you are anymore, or what sort of world you belong to. You seem to have plenty of time for your dance lessons, and your speech class, and sending some poor sap to prison, and who knows what else. You spend every spare nickel on your precious wardrobe and grooming. You talk incessantly about your little girlfriend Andrea and her awesome wardrobe. What am I supposed to think about that, John? How serious do you want me to be?”
John switched into prosecutor mode. She had seen it many times before. His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “I don’t believe what I’m hearing! You are the most self-righteous, hyper-critical, overly possessive woman I’ve ever known. You’ve never been a wife to me, and you’re not even half a mother to that boy. You spend all your time schlepping from one coffee klatch to the next—”
“I do those things because I hunger for adult involvement, something I never get from you.”
“I’m not going to listen to this.”
“You never do. You never listen to anyone except yourself.”
Cathy watched her husband’s face turn crimson. For a moment she expected him to throw the mug of coffee he’d been holding into her face.
“You wonder why I’m not here more often? Ask yourself, who would want to come to this place and listen to you? I’m leaving.”
He set the mug down and reached for his smartphone on the coffee table. Before he could reach it, Cathy snatched the phone up and hurled it across the room with all her might. It broke into pieces against the stone fireplace.
“Cathy! Look what you’ve done!”
“Good. I’m glad I did it. Now maybe you’ll try talking without that prosthesis attached to your ear.”
“That phone is the property of the United States Department of Justice. Do you know what you’ve done? You’ve just committed a federal crime—a felony. I could have you locked up for that.”
“Locked up? Go ahead. It will be a great addition to your résumé.” Cathy was hurt, furious, frightened, and overwhelmed.
“You’re being ridiculous.” John picked up the damaged phone and studied it.
A bitter realization settled in her mind. Her marriage was over. This was it. She couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer. Their marriage was a fraud and always had been, since the day she’d dropped out of Boston College to marry the young law student living in Cambridge, thinking he loved her like she loved him. Tears streaming, she pressed both hands over her mouth, sobbing, gasping for air. Somehow, she managed to utter the words, “Goodbye, John. It’s over. I’m going home this time.”
“No, you’re not. In a few hours, you’ll settle down and realize how good you have it.” He walked to the door. “I think it’s best if I sleep at a motel tonight. We can talk when you’ve regained your reason.” John stormed from the house.
Twelve hours later Cathy loaded the van with clothes, valuables, and other personal items. Then she called the school and arranged to pick up Jack during his lunch hour.
Because her son had always been so hard for her to handle, Cathy made some calls arranging a stay with his grandfather in Colorado. “It’s temporary,” she promised him. “Just until I get things figured out.” She expected the boy would complain. Leaving school that way, without an opportunity to say goodbye to his teammates and friends, and leaving behind everything he valued gave him the right to argue, but he didn’t. Somehow, that made her decision more difficult. She reminded herself that Jack never liked going to Connecticut with her and her parents, who showed no interest in him or his life.
John had even suggested on one occasion that Jack would be a lot better off with his Grandpa Chester. “Those two think alike,” he said. Cathy called her father-in-law to see if he was receptive to the idea, and he was delighted at the prospect of having his grandson come to live with him for a while. Ever since Rose had died, Chester had been feeling a growing sense of uselessness and isolation. Having his grandson around the house for a while would be a breath of fresh air for him—a new beginning. In a sense she was doing Jack and her father-in-law a favor. She told herself that repeatedly, but it still never felt right.
After throwing some of Jack’s clothes, sports equipment, and other essentials into a duffle bag, she drove him to Baltimore’s Thurgood Marshall Airport, bought him a one-way ticket to Colorado Springs, and put her only child on the plane to Grandpa’s.
FOR SEVERAL WEEKS Matt Branson immersed himself in his study of the Diversity and Tolerance Enforcement Division. Thanks to some careful, but always ethical inter-departmental data snooping, he was able to download public case files and records of arrests and confiscations. He examined how the charges against people like Jim Stockman and others had been filed. In every case, it seemed to him, DTED lawyers had shopped the cases to sympathetic judges. And those going to trial were all in D.C. courts, the first to have a full array of new judges under the Retirement and Expansion Act. They used grand juries that were stacked to make sure every juror would be sympathetic to the prosecutor’s case.
It was while Matt was immersing himself in these discoveries that Pat Preston called his office phone. He hadn’t seen Pat since graduation. When Matt left Princeton and headed to Ann Arbor, Pat had been on his way to Louisville to become a Baptist preacher. Matt knew from Christmas card notes and a wedding announcement that Pat had finished Southern Baptist Seminary, been ordained, and moved to Nashville to serve as the senior minister of a large Baptist church. Recently, Pat had been interviewed on radio and TV stations. Matt had even tuned in a few times. It didn’t surprise him to hear Pat was taking heat for some of his uncompromising positions. But when he heard that John Knox Smith and DTED were on his case, his heart sunk.
“Tell me what’s going on, Pat,” he said. Pat explained about John’s phone call and the growing sense that someone was investigating him.
As he listened to Pat’s story, Matt could see it all playing before his eyes. The pieces were coming together, not just with Pat and John, or where all this might be headed. He suddenly saw what was happening in his own life. He understood for the first time what his calling was all about: fulfilling his passion for defending the defenseless.
Only the week before he had been thinking: This is what God has been doing with me all along. I couldn’t figure it out, but now I think I understand. This is why I’ve been so troubled in my spirit ever since I got here, and why I felt I ought to be doing more with my life. This is it!
He now understood
that all the research he had been doing on DTED had a much bigger purpose than he imagined. His conversation with the kid in Alexandria, and now Pat’s situation—they were part of the same thing.
“There are things I can’t get into, Pat, but I can say within legal bounds that you are the kind of target John and DTED love to prosecute. Still, I can’t believe he’d go after an old friend.”
“I don’t think he considers us friends, Matt. He was really angry on the phone and blamed me for his embarrassment. It’s hard to believe how different we turned out.”
“You need to get a lawyer, Pat. That’s all I can say at this time. I don’t know just how John has you in his crosshairs and he’s not likely to tell me.”
“You think I need an attorney?”
“If he comes after you, then you’re going to need one—a good one.” Matt wondered how much further he should go. “Pat, if I talk to you beyond telling you to get legal counsel, then the DOJ can fire me. They can have my license revoked.”
“I understand.”
“Listen, Pat. I can’t advise you, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care. I’m going to give you my private mobile number. Will you stay in touch?”
“Yes. I can’t…Matt, I can’t back away from the truth, even if John decides to make an example of me. Do you understand?”
“I understand.” Matt hung up and rubbed the back of his neck. He had done nothing wrong, nothing in violation of DOJ operating principles, but he felt the attorney general himself was going to kick down the office door.
His instincts said to back away, to protect himself. His soul said something else. Can I afford not to get involved? Morally? Can I just ignore an injustice of this magnitude? He didn’t think so.
PRESSURES CONTINUED TO mount around Pat. Some people in his church were beginning to pull away. Publicly they were all smiles, but privately, at least according to what his staff told him, they would say, “We’ve known this man for years and we always thought he was more or less normal, but we’re not so sure anymore. We’re seeing a whole new side of Pastor Pat.”
A few bolder members told him that ever since he returned from his time in England, he seemed different. Many in the congregation had noticed the changes, and they talked about those changes with their friends. It was true that his sermons were stronger now and he was more passionate about preaching the Gospel; but some members felt he was less tolerant of behaviors and lifestyles he disapproved of, and much too judgmental.
The media played a role, often naming Pastor Pat and Rogers Memorial as an example of religious intolerance. A local television station broadcast a series of investigative reports in which one of Pat’s most trusted supporters was quoted saying, “The government has been showing us the face of bigotry, up close and personal, and some of us feel we’ve been betrayed by our church’s leader.”
This was the same man who came to Pat after his installation service a few years earlier and told him, “We’ll be there for you, Pastor Pat, no matter what happens. We know that God has sent you to us.” The man was also one of the most trusted and influential leaders in the church. However, when he saw which way the social wind was blowing, he changed his tune. Other friends who had often invited Pat and Becky into their homes seemed to be running the other way, as well. Not because they were thoughtless or insensitive, but, as Pat concluded, because the outside pressures were too intense.
Several of the old guard in the church, including some of the charter members who had been faithful church supporters for more than thirty years, came to the office and told Pat, “If you get yourself into hot water with this stuff, Pastor, it’s going to change everything around here. We have to think about the future. We can’t keep living in the past.”
One woman came up to shake hands with Pat after the Sunday service. Instead of thanking him for the sermon, she said, “If you keep saying the kinds of things you’ve been saying lately, Pastor, it’s going to change your life. This church will survive, but you’ll be ruined, and your family will pay the price. You should think about these things.”
Such warnings were upsetting, but each time he heard the comments, he swallowed hard and promised to pray about it. And he did. One afternoon as Pat was putting his papers away and preparing to go home, Frank Billington, his most trusted associate, stopped by the office, purportedly to see how Pat was holding up.
“I’m going to be fine, Frank. Thanks for asking. But, honestly, I have to admit, I’m definitely feeling the pressure.”
“I can imagine,” Frank said.
“I don’t know where it will end, but I feel God has given me a message, calling sinners to repentance, and I can’t walk away from that, no matter what happens.”
Frank grimaced and looked at the floor, as if embarrassed by what he heard. “You know, Pat, a lot of people think it would be better for all of us if you would bend with this thing rather than letting yourself be broken by it.”
Pat wasn’t sure if he’d heard him correctly. “Frank, you’ve always been such a strong advocate and friend. You’ve been a mentor and confidant to me ever since I got here. Are you saying I should back away and preach some other gospel?”
Frank had taken Pat under his wing when he first arrived in Nashville and helped bring him along with wise counsel and encouragement. Pat thought of him as the Rock of Gibraltar. “We have to be strong, Frank, even if they send in the Marines. The truth is still the truth, and that’s not up for grabs. Even if they bring the entire weight of the government down on our heads, we can’t compromise God’s truth. Did the apostles run when persecutions came? Did Peter run from Nero’s wrath? Did Paul jump ship?”
Frank sighed and rose to leave. Before walking out, he looked back and whispered, “Pat, I don’t know you anymore.”
The words broke Pat’s heart. Tears were forming in his eyes. “You too, Frank? Apparently, I never knew you.”
On the drive home, Pat’s thoughts churned. What would he do now? If Frank Billington could turn on him so quickly, what would the deacons do? What about the members? What would he say to Becky, who was already a long way beyond nervous about what was happening to them?
When John Knox Smith hung up on him after that bizarre phone call a few days earlier, Pat felt he was in trouble. He prayed then, “God help me! I’m really going to need it.” He had uttered the same prayer countless times since.
When he arrived home that evening he stood in the kitchen while Becky was busy cooking dinner. He shared with her all Frank said. She said very little and he saw her trying to be brave in the face of terrifying possibilities. He took her hand and they prayed. Her hand shook.