Song of Praise Read online

  Song of Praise

  Praise Him Anyhow Series

  Book 9

  Vanessa Miller

  Prologue

  Looking out of the window from the twenty-first floor of his hotel room, RaShawn Thomas watched the people go about their business. Carrying packages, coming in and out of restaurants, smiling and laughing as they walked the streets. The people didn’t seem the least bit aware of the destruction that was to come. But as sure as the flood waters of hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and as sure as a tsunami could ravage and cripple a nation before they even knew what hit them, so too would be the way of the destruction that was to come. All that was required to turn back God’s planned destruction was for the people to repent, but sadly, this nation and others like it was taking pleasure in their sins. They thought they had won, and that the truth of God had lost. Not realizing that God doesn’t bow to any man or any sin, no matter how the world tries to dress it up.

  Last night as he opened his Bible and turned to Jeremiah 51:20, RaShawn felt as if the Lord was speaking directly to him as he read:

  Thou art my battle axe and weapons of war: for with thee will I break in pieces the nations, and with thee will I destroy kingdoms.

  RaShawn had no understanding as to how he would break nations or destroy kingdoms, but he knew for sure that the Lord had ordered his steps all the way to Washington, DC. When his sister, Raven had called and asked him to come to Richmond, Virginia to be a spiritual advisor for her husband, Marcus Allen, he’d wondered then what God was up to. His brother-in-law had won the election and as governor of Virginia, Marcus and Raven were doing the Lord’s work and doing right by the people in their state.

  When RaShawn received the call concerning his new assignment, he felt as if God had released him from watching his brother-in-law’s back. God had Marcus, and now the Lord was sending him on a new mission.

  RaShawn had started his ministry service on the mission field. While doing the Lord’s work in one country after the next, he had encountered demonic forces that tried to stop his mission. But God had always made a way of escape for RaShawn. As he left the hotel and walked down the street towards his new assignment, a chill went through RaShawn’s body as he felt the presence of demonic forces that were much stronger than any he had ever encountered.

  Looking up to heaven, RaShawn silently prayed, Lord, be my strength.

  As he entered the church, RaShawn clearly heard the Lord respond.

  I will, now go forth and be my battle axe.

  The senior bishop of the fellowship met him in the entryway, shook his hand and said, “You made it safely, good. Come on in.”

  “Before we get started,” RaShawn began as they walked down the hall towards his new office, “I’d just like to thank you for selecting me for this position.”

  Senior Bishop David Brown opened the door to the office and said, “I don’t think you’ll be thanking me once you see the mess you’ve inherited.”

  Chapter One

  Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.

  (Romans 12:2)

  Murder isn’t so hard, the killer thought, looked at the lifeless body of the victim the killer felt no remorse. How could one feel remorse when murder hadn’t actually been committed—this was an assisted suicide. The man’s sins had killed him. Now the Avenger of Sins, AKA the killer, sat down at the sinful man’s desk and turned on the computer. The Avenger of Sins opened the man’s email box and wrote a quick note, addressing it to Bishop RaShawn Thomas and put the killers real name on the signature line. The Avenger gasped as the name appeared on the computer screen, but then hit the backspace key several times.

  Done with the email the Avenger clicked the Send button. The Avenger then walked back over to the dead man to spit on the body. But then thought about DNA, and what a shame it would be if the Avengers deeds were discovered because of something done on impulse. If that happened the Avenger wouldn’t be able to finish the mission. And if the mission failed, then the Avenger wouldn’t be able to exist—for after all, the Avenger was born to set the captives free. Instead of spitting on the dead man, the Avenger of Sins lifted a foot and kicked him in the ribs. The killer wanted to stomp him, but the Avenger remembered a show on Court TV where a killer was discovered because his shoe print was at the crime scene. The Avenger loved Reality TV; they always provided such good information.

  The Avenger put the calling card on top of the body. Walking out of the room, the Avenger smiled as the thought of how much better the world would be with one more dead preacher.

  ***

  “No. No, this is not happening. Not again,” Bishop RaShawn Thomas said as he read his email. Some maniac was killing off the preachers within his fellowship and sending him emails about the awful deed. RaShawn had called the police immediately after receiving the last two emails, but it hadn’t done him any good. By the time the police arrived at the homes of Pastor William Johnson and Pastor Nicolas Brown they were already dead. So RaShawn wasn’t waiting this time. He would call the police on his way to Pastor Tony Hartman’s home.

  RaShawn grabbed his keys and then jumped into his Range Rover, all the while praying that he wasn’t too late. Tony Hartman had given him more trouble than any of the preachers within his fellowship. The man was arrogant, self-serving and a womanizer; all of which served as the reasons RaShawn had asked the man to step down from his position. Since he’d taken over as bishop he’d asked a total of six pastors to step down.

  RaShawn was a man with a true heart for God and therefore, he wanted to work with pastors who had the same hunger and passion that he had. The thought of a preacher misusing the children of God turned his stomach. He’d sat silently by and watched these so-called men of God work their way through ministries all his life. They destroyed lives and turned saints away from God with their lust for immorality and greedy ambitions. RaShawn had promised God that if he ever led a fellowship, he would get rid of every pimping preacher and womanizing minister that crossed his path. However, RaShawn never imagined that his goal of clearing out immorality amongst the leadership would result in murder.

  Speeding down Interstate 285 headed to Tony’s house, RaShawn pulled out his cell phone. He dialed Detective Jarod Harris’ cell number. Detective Harris had been assigned to Pastor William Johnson’s case and then subsequently assigned to Pastor Nicolas Brown’s case. After Brown’s murder, Detective Harris had handed RaShawn his business card and said, “If you run into any more dead preachers, call my cell phone.”

  RaShawn had hoped the detective’s comment was nothing more than a bad joke and that he would never need to talk to Jarod Harris again in life, but here he was, waiting for the detective to answer the phone.

  “Detective Harris.”

  RaShawn heard the greeting and almost hung up. He had never been through anything like this in all his life. He had grown up in ministry, and in all his thirty-two years, had never heard of a preacher being murdered in his own home.

  “This is Detective Harris; is anyone there?”

  “Oh, yes, Detective. This is Bishop RaShawn Thomas.”

  “Don’t tell me that another one of your preachers has gotten himself killed.”

  Not wanting to accept that Pastor Tony was actually dead, RaShawn only confirmed, “I just received another email.”

  “Who is it this time?” Jarod asked, sounding a little irritated.

  “The email was about Pastor Tony Hartman.”

  “Tony Hartman! I watch his program, This is Your Moment all the time,” Jarod said, sounding a little more interested now.

  “Can you meet me at his house?”

&nb
sp; “Yeah. What’s his address?”

  RaShawn gave the detective the address and then hung up the phone. He was saddened by the shock in Detective Harris’ tone, but a lot of people would be shocked to know that the same preacher who taught millions how to claim their moment and how to always be in the midst of God’s perfect timing was the same man who regularly solicited prostitutes and had been carrying on a three-year affair with a stripper named Peaches.

  RaShawn prayed that Tony was still alive as he pulled up behind the man’s Bentley, jumped out of his SUV and began pounding on the front door. “Tony, are you in there?”

  He knocked on the door several more times, calling Tony’s name without receiving a response. Tony’s wife, Carla had divorced him a year ago, so RaShawn didn’t expect that she would open the door or be in the house to help Tony in his time of need. He grabbed the door knob and turned it. The door opened. But instead of RaShawn rejoicing, he inwardly cringed because he knew that Tony never left his door unlocked. Checking each room one by one, RaShawn kept calling Tony’s name.

  When he reached Tony’s home office towards the back of the house on the first floor, RaShawn found Tony stretched out on the floor. He ran to the preacher and knelt down beside him. He lifted his wrist to feel for a pulse. RaShawn then noticed two things at once: There was no pulse and there was a note card lying on Tony’s chest. The card had a message. It read, You do right, and I won’t do wrong.

  “Bishop Thomas, are you in here?”

  RaShawn heard Detective Harris as he entered the house. He wanted to go greet the man but he didn’t want to leave Tony. That fact was ironic to him now, since a couple of weeks ago he wanted to not just get far away from Tony, but to strip the man of his license to preach the gospel. “I’m in here,” he hollered.

  “Is he dead?” Detective Harris asked as he entered the room.

  RaShawn nodded.

  “Does he have a card on his chest?”

  RaShawn nodded again.

  “Did you touch it?”

  “No. It was right side up on his chest. I was able to read what it says without touching it.” RaShawn turned to Detective Harris with a stunned expression on his face. “Was this note on the other bodies as well?”

  “Yes, but we haven’t released that information to the public.” Detective Harris stepped toward the body as he said, “You shouldn’t be in here.”

  “I had hoped to find him alive.” RaShawn rubbed his forehead with the palm of his hand as he stood up. “I honestly don’t know how much more of this I can take. I don’t understand why this maniac has decided to kill the pastors I fired.”

  “You fired Pastor Hartman! The man was an icon. I didn’t think anyone but God had the authority to fire a man like him.”

  RaShawn lowered his head as his shoulders slumped.

  Putting a hand on the bishop’s shoulder, Jarod said, “You can’t blame yourself, Bishop. Whoever killed these men did exactly what he wanted to do.”

  There was no blood. But RaShawn hadn’t expected to see any. Detective Harris hadn’t communicated much about the other two men’s deaths, but he had informed RaShawn that the preachers had been poisoned. RaShawn looked around the room, trying to discover what someone could have used to poison Tony. His eyes drifted to a bottle of grape juice, crumpled crackers and a single wine glass on the desk in Tony’s home office. “The poison is in the grape juice, isn’t it?”

  “In the last two cases the poison had only been in the glass, but not in the bottle of grape juice,” Detective Harris said, and then quickly added, “That does not leave this room. We haven’t released that information to the public either.”

  RaShawn turned back toward Tony Hartman and rubbed his forehead with his palm again.

  “I’m going to call this in,” Detective Harris said. “I need you to wait in the living room so I can question you once I get things in order. And try not to beat me to the next crime scene. Okay?”

  Bishop RaShawn wearily walked out of the room and sat down in the living room as he was instructed. He didn’t plan to beat Detective Harris to the next crime scene, because RaShawn hoped and prayed that there wouldn’t be another one. He had every intention of begging and pleading for police protection for the last three preachers that he recently fired.

  He waited while Detective Harris ushered other police officers and forensic technicians into the crime scene. He was sure that Detective Harris would want to speak with him once they had taken care of Tony, so he just kept waiting. RaShawn wished he had remembered to bring the email that he’d received, but the last two emails hadn’t provided much of anything to go on. The person sending the messages used a different computer and location with each message.

  RaShawn watched as one of the detectives carried the grape juice and wine glass out in a Ziplock bag. It was somehow out of place to see just one wine glass with grape juice. After all, it wasn’t actual wine that Tony had been drinking, which he was sure the man indulged in privately. But why would he drink grape juice in a wine glass by himself? RaShawn associated grape juice with communion. Would Tony have taken communion by himself or did the killer also drink it? That would explain why the bottle wasn’t tainted. The killer must have poured the poison in Tony’s glass and then had communion with him. But why communion? RaShawn wondered.

  The Bible clearly states in I Corinthians 11:27, “Whosoever shall eat this bread, and drink this cup of the Lord, unworthily, shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord.” Is that what the mad man was trying to tell them?

  RaShawn had no problem understanding the note that was left on Tony’s body, but this communion thing was a mystery to him. A murderer and a whoremonger had no reason to partake in communion, did they?

  “There’s a camera crew outside. You might want to give his next of kin a quick call before they hear about this on the news,” Detective Harris told RaShawn as he walked into the living room.

  “Me? But I fired the man. His sister was smoking mad at me for that; no way does she want to hear from me right now.”

  “I can do it myself, but it’s going to be a while. I just thought you might want to beat the afternoon news.” Detective Harris nodded toward the big picture window in the living room.

  RaShawn looked outside and saw just what the detective had been referring to. Camera crews from several news stations were lining the street just below Tony’s driveway. He turned back around and said, “I’ll call her.”

  RaShawn took out his cell phone, dreading the call he had to make to Judge Lisa Hartman. But as he began punching in the number, RaShawn changed his mind about which Hartman he would call. Tony’s niece, Britney and RaShawn had history. Two years ago, he and his sister, Raven had saved Britney from a crazy lady who’d wanted to kill her because she’d made the mistake of not only sleeping with the woman’s husband, but getting pregnant by him. The ordeal had caused Britney to miscarry.

  After the miscarriage, Britney decided to no longer wallow in the pain of her past and got busy cleaning up her act. She was now working as an insurance fraud investigator. She and her mother still weren’t on the best of terms, due to her past behavior, but maybe something like this could help to bring mother and daughter back together.

  Even knowing that he should call Judge Hartman, it mattered more to RaShawn to find out how this whole thing would affect Britney. He dialed her number and waited for her to pick up. When she did, there was laughter in her voice and RaShawn hated that he was about to take the joy she had found away from her.

  Chapter Two

  Running late as usual, Britney Hartman threw her camera around her neck as she grabbed a bag of chips, a banana, blueberry muffin and a Mountain Dew—stake out food. She was hot on the trail of a man she believed to be defrauding his employer with a false workman’s compensation claim. The guy had worked as a roofer and claimed that he hurt his back and neck falling from a two-story home. Britney had been following him for two weeks now; so far he had been careful. Always making
sure to wear his neck brace and carrying his cane around like he was a ninety-year-old man. But yesterday, Britney noticed that Jason Malvern, the man who was on workman’s comp, was having work done on his roof. When she arrived at his home, Britney had been thrilled at what she saw. He hadn’t actually climbed the ladder or taken a hammer to any of the roofing material; that would have been the money shot. But he hadn’t been wearing his neck brace, and his cane had magically disappeared also.

  Britney was hopeful that Jason would get on that roof today as she sat in her car watching him chug down a beer with the roofer guy. She was parked one block over, in the perfect spot to see everything that was going on in the back of Jason’s house. The only problem was, Britney had noticed a ladder propped against the front of the house and one propped against the back of the house. Yesterday there had only been the one ladder in the back. So, now Britney was eating her chips and praying that Jason would get on the ladder in the back and not the one in the front of the house. Because if he got on the one in the front, she would be forced to either run around front to snap his picture or drive around there. Either way, Jason might spot her and she didn’t want that.

  Britney had been an investigator for a year and a half now. There was never a boring day in her career. Working for an insurance company, she had been assigned to investigate everything from wrongful death cases to stolen jewelry. Britney always followed her instincts and let her employer know up front whether she thought she was on the trail of a fraud or not. If all those years of drug abuse had taught her nothing else, it had taught her how to spot a fraud—because she had been one.

  Her phone rang. Britney looked at the caller ID and saw that it was her best friend, Rita Knox. She normally didn’t answer calls when she was on a stake out, but Rita was one of the rare exceptions to that rule. At one time, she and Rita had been pregnant by the same man. The man, a United States senator, had been killed by his wife. Rita had delivered her baby three months after his death. However, Britney had miscarried. Even though the two women could have gone their separate ways after Bishop RaShawn had saved them from that terrible ordeal, she and Rita had become friends and Britney helped her friend with babysitting services… even while she prayed that she would one day have the opportunity to marry the man of her dreams and give birth to his children.