Free STATE OF ANGER: A Virgil Jones Mystery Series (Detective Virgil Jones Mystery Series Book 1) by Thomas Scott Page A

doubt it, Amanda. Have
your husband call me as soon as he gets home.” When Virgil tried to hand her
his business card she refused to take it so he laid it on the small receiving
table next to the door. As soon as he set it down a gust of wind swirled
through the doorway and blew the card onto the floor as if the table were no
more willing to accept his contact information than the woman who stood at his
side. He stepped out into the sunlight, the sound of the brass doorknocker banging
against itself as the door slammed shut behind him.
    __________
     
     
    There were no misconceptions in
Virgil’s mind as to whether or not Amanda Pate would tell her husband to call,
so Virgil drove over to the Pate Ministry complex located on the outer edges of
a shopping center on the city’s west side. The massive brick building situated
in the center of the property was so non-descript it looked more like a small
hospital or office building than a church. Most of the property had been paved
with blacktop and dedicated to parking, and when he turned into the entrance of
the complex, Virgil saw that the parking lot was completely full. He parked next
to the yellow-curbed sidewalk in front of the building then set a laminated placard
on the dash identifying his truck as an official state vehicle.
    A landscaper was spreading
fertilizer on the grass. Parts of the sidewalk were covered with the chemical granules
and they crunched under Virgil’s boots as if he were walking across a crushed
shell parking lot, the kind you find in ocean side towns of the Deep South. Four
sets of double glass doors with reflective tint separated by square brick
pillars fronted the building, and when he was less than ten feet away they all
opened at once and a throng of people exited the building and made their way to
the parking lot. Virgil had to stand aside and wait for the first wave of
people to pass before he could get inside the building. The scene reminded him
of quitting time at the factory where his grandfather had worked his entire
life. His mom or his grandmother would sometimes take him along and they’d sit
at the curb or on the trunk of the car and then the steam whistle would blow
and the men would pour out of the factory like the inside of the building was
on fire and about to explode.
    The lobby area of the church was
bigger than Virgil expected. Hundreds of people clustered about in small
groups, talking or laughing, and some even held hands in a circle, their eyes
closed, their heads bowed in prayer as if they had to put in one more request
to God before they left the building. There was a café of some sort along the
eastern wall of the lobby serving coffee, tea and croissants. Small tables with
open umbrellas in their center holes lined a vertical railed enclosure where
people sat and talked with one another, their faces full of hope and joy as if
perhaps they were the chosen few who were lucky enough to have found their
heaven on earth. Next to the café was a bookstore where still more people
browsed the aisles while others waited in line to pay for their literary
selections. Across the lobby on the opposite wall a large area separated by
red-roped stanchions contained a maze of multi-colored tube slides, the kind
you see in the children’s section of fast food restaurants. Dozens of children
ran and happily climbed the ladders then slid down through the tubes, their
hair full of static electricity when they popped out the bottom. Virgil turned
back around and looked at the doors he’d just entered feeling a little like
Alice must have felt when she followed the rabbit down a hole and ended up in a
mystical place that made no sense to her at all.
    A number of the children and
younger adults wore beaded bracelets on their wrists, the ones with WWJD on
them and even Virgil knew the letters stood for ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ Virgil
looked around for a few seconds and thought if Jesus were here, he would in all
likelihood wait until