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“I just wish I’d squeezed harder when I had my hands around his neck,” his brother Mike grumbled.

“You didn’t,” said Francine, wide-eyed.

“Oh, yes, I did. I told him in no uncertain terms what I thought of him, and he squealed like a pig when I lifted him clear off the floor.”

“So… did you kill him?” asked Odelia.

“No, I didn’t,” said Mike. “I finally let him go, after he promised me he was going to sign the divorce papers the moment they arrived, which I told him wouldn’t be long.”

“I could have killed him,” said Barney Sowman now. “A nice big whack across the occipital bone with an aluminum bat would have done the trick. Or just your plain household hammer, of course,” he allowed, for the sake of argument.

“But you didn’t?” asked Uncle Alec.

“Nope, I didn’t. Tex beat me to it,” he said with a touch of regret. “Literally. Though in all honesty I probably wouldn’t have gone through with it. I think when push comes to shove I don’t have it in me to go around murdering people. I guess I’m just not that guy.”

“I know how you feel,” said Monica Chanting’s husband Garvin. He was a big guy, built like a brick outhouse. “When I found out about my wife having an affair with Doctor Jones I wanted to squash him like a fly. Stomp on his neck like a viper. Tear him limb from limb like a pi?ata. Rip him up with my backhoe like a tree stump. Split his head like a melon. But I only found out after he was already dead,” he concluded with regret.

All eyes now turned to Jason, who’d gone markedly pale, and was sweating profusely.

“Simply confess, Jason,” Omar said kindly. “You’ll feel so much better, you’ll see.”

“But I didn’t do it!” Jason cried, his voice shrill. “How can I confess to something I didn’t do!”

“So you really want an innocent man to go to prison for a crime you committed?” asked Omar. “You want that on your conscience, too?”

Jason gulped some more.

“He looks guilty, Max,” said Dooley.

“He does indeed,” I said.

“Think of the twelve steps, son,” Father Reilly tried. “Get up and introduce yourself.”

Jason stared at the priest, then at the others present, then buried his face in his hands for a moment, before abruptly getting up and saying, in a shaky voice,“My name is Jason and I’m an alcoholic. I’m also… a murderer.”

Chapter 37

“Why did you do it?” asked Omar, still adopting the same kindly tone he had throughout the meeting.

“I don’t know. It came out of nowhere,” said Jason, taking a seat again. “I-I’d gone over there to tell him to back off. That I wasn’t going to take any more of his crap, and things… got out of hand.”

“What crap?” asked Omar.

Jason squeezed his eyes shut, then sighed.“Look, before Jaqlyn joined Soul Science I was the big cheese around here, okay? I was on the inner circle and I was the one sitting next to Master Omar at the table. I was the man, and for the first time ever I felt like my life had purpose, I was going places. People looked up to me and asked me for advice. Girls suddenly started going out with me. Me! Jason Blowhard! It was like a dream.”

“And then Jaqlyn showed up,” Omar prompted gently.

Jason’s expression darkened. “Right from the get-go he started playing mind games. As my doctor he knew all about my past. The boozing, the drugs—”

“Drugs?” asked Odelia, sounding surprised.

“Oh, I’ve been clean for months,” said Jason, like a man at a job interview convincing a future employer of his merits. “But Jaqlyn started telling me it wasn’t fitting for an addict to be in my position. He said I was sending out the wrong energetic vibe, and also, I didn’t look the part.” He touched his face tattoo. “He said I looked like an ex-con and I was liable to scare people away from Soul Science by featuring so prominently in all of the videos. For the sake of the movement he advised me to take a step back and assume a backstage role. At least until I’d had the tattoo removed.”

“You never told me this,” said Omar.

“I thought you knew!” said Jason. “I thought you knew all, saw all, heard all…”

“Oh, God,” said Omar, quite aptly. “I’m just a dude, Jason. All I ever wanted was to bring a little soul into this world. I’m not a god, buddy. Six months ago I was still advising people about Credit Default Swaps and Synthetic Collateralized Debt Obligations! Well, before crashing my Lamborghini Aventador into a guardrail on Route 73, of course.”

“Anyway, when I kicked up a fuss about giving up my position on the inner circle and at your table, Jaqlyn said he’d tell everyone about my predilection for hard liquor and coke, and promised I’d be kicked out of Soul Science and lose all my newfound friends.”

“My husband was a bastard,” said Francine matter-of-factly. “A grade A skunk.”

“So I decided to give him a piece of my mind and confront him. I was frankly fed up, and…” He bowed his head. “I kinda lost my nerve and… took a quick snifter.”

“Oh, Jason,” said Father Reilly.

“It’s fine,” said Omar. “You fell off the wagon, you can get on again.”