Free The Eyes Die Last by Teri Riggs Page B

funds needed to hire more police officers.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars would be collected in licensing fees alone.” 
    Several questions later, the interview came to a close and the camera team left.  Nick wondered if Hershey would run the piece or shelve it. 
    Louis St. Louis had given very different answers to the same questions. 
    “Prostitution has got to stop.  We must use any and all means necessary to run the harlots out of our cities.  Prostitutes bring evil wherever they go.  Something must be done before the children of Las Vegas are corrupted.  Again I say, Prostitution.  Mu st . Be.  Stopped.”  He smashed a fist on his desk. 
    The cameraman flinched at the loud banging. 
    “The laws of God prohibit sexual relations outside the bonds of marriage.  The punishment by God for improper sexual relationships is most severe.  Consider those who lived before the great flood.  Their punishment was death by water and they were taken in spirit to hell.”  He paused only to catch his breath.  “Is that what we want for our city?  For our state?  Our country?  I think not.” 
    After the news crew left Louis’ office, he went to the couch and leaned his head back.  Louis knew how Campenelli would have answered the same questions.  They had different opinions on how to fix the problems of Las Vegas. 
    His thoughts turned to the years when he and Nicky Campenelli’d grown up together.  They were both lonely kids.  Neither had siblings and their parents hadn’t given a damn about them.  But they had each other. 
    They were friends until Louis’ alcoholic dad got behind the wheel of his car one night and had a head butting contest with a concrete highway divider.  The concrete block won. 
    Afterwards, his mother packed Louis up and moved to Utah where she married a strict Mormon.  His stepfather dished out beatings as often as Ben and Jerry’s dished out its rocky road ice cream. 
    He couldn’t begin to count the number of days his stepfather had locked him in a small cellar under the barn and waited for him to renounce his evil ways.  Louis thanked the Lord the day the old man dropped dead of a heart attack while nearly beating Louis to death.  The son of a bitch hadn’t left his mother a dime. 
    After the funeral, the church turned its back on his mother and him.  They’d moved back to Nevada, the second move in three years.  When his mother figured out she couldn’t support a teenager and herself on the money she could make without an education, she turned to the world’s oldest profession.  She sold her body, bringing her tricks home with her. 
    Once again, Louis fought to survive.  He suffered beatings from some of her customers and tried, sometimes unsuccessfully, to fight off the occasional man who preferred boys over his mother.  He never understood how she could have exposed him to men like that, or how she could have sold her body. 
    Years later, after drifting back to the religion that had shunned him and his mother, Louis became a dedicated Mormon, one of the youngest men ever appointed a Ward Bishop.  Mr.  Religious, just like his dear old step-daddy.  He was responsible for the well-being of the members of his very small ward in the equally small Utah city they’d moved to.  He was preaching sermons he was proud of.  Strong, powerful sermons.  People listened to him.  He was somebody to be praised. 
    Or so he thought. 
    When the good people of his congregation decided his sermons had turned dark for their liking, they began to complain.  The straw on the camel’s back was a busy-bodied church member who found out how his mother had supported them after his stepfather died.  It was all they’d needed to excommunicate them.  Louis took his mother and moved further West to start his own church. 
    His Church Of The Light, which he’d based closely on Mormon beliefs, grew.  He had a loyal following and the donations were rolling in.  Louis