Healing - Day 5

 “What do you know about faith healers?” Frank asked Father Bill.

“What do you mean?”

“Faith healing, what do you know about it?”

“I know it’s been a part of the Christian faith since the beginning. Is that what you mean?”

“No, is there anything to it?”

“Well, Jesus laid hands on people and supposedly cured them and people are miraculously cured all the time. That’s the only way I know how to answer you.”

“I guess what I’m saying is, can it be done on command? Can I just grab your head, say a prayer, yell ‘heal’, and you’re cured.”

“Not unless you want me to slap the hell out of you,” Bill laughed. “No, I’m sorry. You’re talking about those TV preachers. Isn't that what you’re talking about?”

“Yea, I’ve been watching one of them on TV.”

“Which one, oh heck, it doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.”

“Serious question, is there anything to it?”

Bill breathed out heavily. “You want a straight answer, right?”

“Right.”

“Yes, I believe one’s faith can bring about a cure. I really believe it, but that junk you see on TV is just that, junk. Those charismatic preachers have those people so wound up they think they’re cured and they shout and the audience goes wild, but there’s nothing to it. It’s just what we used to call back in seminary Glory for Gold. Every time those people in the audience seem some guy throw his walker away, or get off his crutches, a few more dollars is thrown in the collection tub.”

“So, there’s nothing to it.”

“Listen to me, Frank. People can be cured by faith. I fully believe in that, but in one of those shows. No, that’s just the old snake oil scam. And, it works. Some of those TV preachers are multi-millionaires, but I have to wonder when they meet their maker, which way they’ll be headed.”

“So there’s nothing to it?”

“No. There has never been a single documented case of faith healing. I mean a man with a confirmed disease, confirmed by a doctor, goes to a faith healer, the faith healer does his thing and a doctor confirms he’s cured. No, it’s never happened. Why the interest in faith healers?”

“Ahh, just a guy came in a couple of days ago. Said his wife had been murdered. She quit taking her meds and died. He said it was murder, ‘course it’s not.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not, the preacher didn’t kill her. She killed herself.”

Healing - Day 4

Two nights later, Logan was again going through the channels and saw another Billy Taylor crusade on the television. This time he was in Minneapolis. Logan thought about the time he had spent in Minneapolis. It was nice in the summer, but in the winter it wasn’t a fit place for anyone. The program was basically the same as the one he had watched a couple of nights before. It was the same music, same lighting, same people falling down silliness. How can people buy into this crap, questioned Logan to himself. Then he noticed something, a light blue handgrip on one of the wheelchairs at the front of the stage. This didn’t make sense. Unless he was watching the same show or the same location, how could the same wheelchair be at the front of the stage?

A couple of minutes on the Internet and Logan found his answer. Tonight, Billy Taylor was in Minneapolis. Two nights ago they were in Memphis. Were the wheelchairs on the stage just a prop? Did they carry wheelchairs around the country? Logan knew it was nothing but a show, but. . . No, he thought. I’m going to watch a whole crusade before I pass judgment. There’s nothing illegal about stage props. It was immoral, maybe, but not illegal. Logan watched the crusade four more times that week, four different towns, but same basic show. In each town, there was the wheelchair with the light blue handgrip. Each time it was in a different place, but each time it was there.

Frank had taken off Thursday mornings for years. And for him, Thursday morning meant golf with Bob Damien, Father Bob Damien, childhood friend and priest. Usually, when they began their Thursday round, one or two people would volunteer themselves to play along with them. Neither man was a scratch golfer, but neither one of them would ever appear in the record books.

The Lacy thing was still pulling on Frank. It wasn’t that it was the only matter on his mind, he probably had a dozen files on his desk being worked. Besides, Lacy wasn’t even a murder. The woman had quit her treatments on her own. She had decided to stop. Suicide? Maybe. Murder? No. But the one thing he couldn’t get off his mind was that damn wheelchair with the light blue handgrip.

Healing - Day 3

I really figured it was going to be the doctor, thought Logan. I guess it’s this Taylor creep he’s blaming, but Taylor didn’t kill her. The woman killed herself. How do I tell this guy?

“Mr. Lacy, I’m sorry for your loss, but, from what you tell me, it was your wife’s decision to stop taking her treatments, not this preacher’s. I wish there was something. . .”

“You’re not going to help me?”

“There’s really nothing I can do. In order to have murder, you have to have malice. I can see no malice here. I really wish there was something I could do.”

Lacy stood and walked out the door. He had told Logan nothing he could use. He felt for the man, but what could he do?”

That night, Logan grabbed supper from Taco Mex. He loved their hot burritos, but they never failed to give him indigestion. Tonight was no different. At two in the morning he moved from the bed to a recliner in front of the television. A handful of Tums should do the trick. It always did. As he flipped through the channels he saw the normal selection of infomercials but paused at one, Reverend Billy Taylor. He had seen Taylor’s program time after time, but never spent more than a second or two, just enough time to see what it was, think some obscenity, then move to the next channel. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt he owed Mr. Lacy something, if it was no more than watching the con man peddle his wares.

The program was just as Lacy had said. Well orchestrated lights, synchronized music and just enough crying to make it emotional. What a scam, he thought.

Just as Logan was ready to change the channel, he noticed the line of walkers and wheelchairs on the front of the stage. One item especially caught his attention. One wheelchair had one light blue handgrip on the chair. It was obviously a replacement because all the other handgrips on the other wheelchairs were cream colored. Even then, the only reason he noticed the blue handgrip was that he had a light blue handgrip on his bike when he was a kid. At first he had hated that handgrip, until he realized he could spot his bike in the rack quicker because of that silly blue handgrip. From then on, he kind of liked it. Without thinking about it anymore, he changed the channel. Some blender infomercial, why should he pay a hundred and fifty bucks for something he can buy at Wal-Mart for twenty?

Healing - Day 2

“The chemotherapy was bad. It made her sick, very sick. So, she stayed in the hospital while she was taking it.”

Come on, Lacy, get to the part where the doctor screwed up and killed her.

“While she was in the hospital lying in the bed, she started watching one of those television preachers. You know, the kind with the big auditorium and the choir and the music. One of those that touches a person’s head and they fall backwards. Far as I was concerned, it was just a con man doing some silly shit and she shouldn’t watch it, but she did. And obviously, she bought it hook, line and sinker because first thing I know, she wants to go see the, I think they call it a crusade.”

“She went to the, what did you call it, Crusade?”

“Yes. This guy, his name is Billy Taylor, just like the singer, was coming to Charlotte. So, I went with her to Charlotte. Damndest show you ever saw. I swear, every single second of that show was designed to bring about emotion, every single second. At a certain time, the man would talk and the lights would go down. He would say something else and the lights would come up. When he was talking low, the music was low. He said something important the music was loud. I know damn well no rock star could have a better produced show. I wanted out of there, but she was eating it up. Any idiot could see it was just a con job for the money.”

“Did she give him money?”

“Oh yes, but it wasn’t that much, That’s not it, Detective. While we were there I saw her talking to somebody, looked like somebody in the show. I can’t say I thought that much about it, but it wasn’t long before they had what they call an altar call, and Frances walked her ass right up front and before I knew it she was on the stage and that son-of-a-bitch was yelling that she was ‘healed’. At the top of his lungs, he was yelling she was healed. Jesus had healed her.”

Come on, Lacy, get on with it. Put her back in the hospital. Let the doctor kill her.

“She came off that stage and she was trembling. She said the Holy Spirit was in her. She was saved. Detective, my wife was an Episcopalian, we don’t believe in that ‘saved’ shit. That’s something those Holiness and snake charmer people believe, not us. But, from then on, she wouldn’t listen to anything. She wouldn’t go back to the doctor, wouldn’t take her medicine, all she would do was talk to those people on the phone an tell me that Jesus was taking care of everything. Well, Jesus didn’t do too well. She passed out and I took her to the hospital four nights ago. She was dead by morning.”

Healing - Day 1

Chapter 1 –

When Logan returned from lunch, a man was sitting beside his desk. It was normal. When people came in asking to see a detective, the desk sergeant always put them at an empty desk. They had found out long ago that an extra minute or two calmed people and made talking to an officer less stressful. And too, we didn’t advertise it, but often, sitting alone in a busy squad room worked on the nut cases and half of them would just get up and leave. It sounded cruel, but it cut down considerably on the people who had seen Elvis and the ones who knew what happened to Kennedy.

“Yes Sir, can I help you?”

“Are you a detective?”

“Yes Sir, Frank Logan, Sergeant Frank Logan. What can I help you with?”

“I want to report a murder.”

“A murder?” asks Logan as he pulls a report from his desk and threads it into his typewriter.

“Can you tell me your name?”

“Yes, Harry Lacy.”

“And the victim’s name, Mr. Lacy.”

“My wife, Frances Lacy.”

“When did this murder occur?”

“Over the last six months, we buried her yesterday.”

This wasn’t making any sense, thought Logan.

“Exactly how did your wife die, Mr. Lacy?”

“She had cancer,” answered the man.

“I thought you said it was a murder.”

“It was.”

Logan leaned back in his chair. There was nothing more to type.

“Maybe you better tell me what happened, Mr. Lacy.” The man had just lost his wife. It was normal after a death for people to blame something, somebody. A few minutes to let him talk it out wouldn’t hurt.

“No, Detective Logan, nobody broke in. Nobody held a gun to her head, but it would be better if they had. That way it would have been quick. At least she wouldn’t have suffered.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“About a year ago, my wife had a cough and some pain in her back. She went to the doctor and come to find, she had lung cancer. God, she worked for it. She smoked for years. Well, a day or two later they operated on her and removed a part of her lung. It looked like everything went okay. The doctor said they thought they got it all, but he wanted her to take some chemotherapy just to be safe.”

Logan felt he knew what would be coming. They didn’t get it all and she died. The doctor killed her. Still, let the man talk it out.