A DEAD RED MIRACLE: #5 in the Dead Red Mystery Series (15 page)

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Chapter Twenty-three:

Both of our phones were ringing. Caleb reached for his on the nightstand while I got out of bed to retrieve mine from my purse.

I was a little fuzzy on the uptake, but I didn't have to say much anyway since Pearlie was doing all the talking.

"Pearlie, can you just cut to the chase? We had to go up to the reservation to deliver the Garza brothers to a family and I barely got any sleep last night."

My cousin didn't bother to apologize. "Jesse Jefferson is dead. He was found hung from a church rafter this morning."

I looked over at Caleb. He had his cell between his ear and shoulder, awkwardly zipping up his pants and stepping into his boots.

When he hung up, I asked, "You got the same call?"

"Jesse's church is in Wishbone, so it's my jurisdiction."

"You shave and wash up, I'll start the coffee."

I went back to my conversation with Pearlie. "Caleb just got the call. Where are you?"

"I'm outside the church now. How long will it take for you to get here?"

"Caleb is getting dressed now, but he won't let us inside, not until after the coroner―"

She interrupted. "Never mind then. I'll tell you how it turns out."

I started to object but I was talking to a dead phone. Pearlie was doing exactly what I would do in her position.

I made the coffee and poked my head into the bathroom door long enough to tell Caleb I was going to the church, but not long enough to wait around to hear his objections. Jesse Jefferson was on our short list of suspects but he was the last person I would suspect of committing suicide.

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DPS officers were unrolling crime scene tape and tacking it to sawhorses as county sheriff deputies and city police urged an angry crowd to remain calm.

When I didn't see Pearlie, I used the excuse to ask a policeman if he'd seen Chief Stone yet.

"Over there, ma'am," he said, tipping his chin at Caleb's white and blue SUV pulling up to the curb.

Before he dipped under the yellow tape, I hitched my arm through his. "You forgot to shave," I said.

"What do you think you're doing?"

"Waiting for you," I said, grimly determined not to be left behind. "Let's see what's happened, shall we?"

Knowing he couldn't shake me off without making a scene, we walked into the church.

Two young sheriff's deputies were inside; one was holding a tall, metal, paint spattered ladder while another deputy, balanced on the highest step, was sawing at the rope.

Caleb rushed down the aisle, yelling at them to stop what they were doing. The young deputy with the saw turned to Caleb as the body slipped out of his grasp and fell the last few feet to the floor.

Caleb cursed. "What the hell do you think you're doing? This is a crime scene. Get off that damn ladder, now!"

I looked down at the pastor's normally cheerful dark face. His brown eyes were slightly open, the color faded in death to that of moonstones.

The rope had been thrown over one of the exposed rafters in front of the pulpit. The knot was clumsily done, but not everyone who kills themselves knows to use a hangman's knot that either breaks the neck as the weight of the body is dropped, or crushes the larynx, causing asphyxiation and death. This one seemed to have done the job, but I knew cause of death would still have to be determined by the M.E.

"Caleb," I said. "Ask them where the ladder was when they came into the church."

He was so angry I didn't think he'd be able to talk to these young men without choking one of them. "Was this ladder here when you came in?"

The deputy had been about to remove an altar cloth, but seeing chief's ice blue eyes go a shade colder, he gave it to the other deputy to cover the body. "I'm sorry, Chief Stone. We heard the call and got here as fast as we could. A crowd was gathering and I couldn't stand the thought of all those people seeing him like this."

"He's our pastor," the other deputy said.

"Just answer the question," Caleb said through clenched teeth.

"It was on the floor," he said, gulping nervously.

"How close to where he was hanging?" I asked.

"Just―I don't know, lying on the floor. About there, I guess," the young officer said, pointing a few feet away from where Jesse had been found hanging from a rafter. That would work for a suicide if he kicked it over, but it didn't explain the gash on the back of the man's head.

"Who called it in?" Caleb asked.

The officer pointed to a weeping woman standing by the side door. "His missus."

"Did you call the medical examiner? Yes? Well there's one thing you did right. One of you take the front door, the other watch the side door and don’t let
anyone
but the M.E. or Sheriff Tom inside, you understand?"

"Yes, sir," they said, and trotted for their assigned positions.

"Will you give me a few minutes to talk to Mrs. Jefferson?" I asked, unable to keep the sorrow out of my voice.

He held up five fingers and left. He understood that I was likely to get more out of the pastor's wife than he would right now. But this was his jurisdiction and his investigation and anything I learned would go directly to him, verbatim if necessary.

I nodded and left to hug Jesse's wife.

"Mrs. Jefferson, I'm so sorry," I said. "Do you want me to call someone for you?"

Her skin was grey, and in spite of the rising heat of summer, her hands were cold. She was going into shock.

"Let's go outside," I said, turning her for the door and away from the sight of her husband's black dress shoes sticking out from under a purple cloth.

I gently sat her down on a bench in the courtyard and rubbed her cold hands between mine. "Breathe, dear lady."

She threw her head back, gulping in great draughts of air as tears coursed down her dark cheeks. "Will you look at that? The sky is still blue, the sun is still shining. That's what my Jesse would call a good day."

"Do you have children or relatives we can call for you?"

"We never had chil'ren, all our relatives is in Mississippi, but don't you worry, honey, someone called my church ladies. They'll be here soon."

Seeing our time would soon be cut short, I asked, "Was there anything different, today or yesterday?"

"He always has a lot on his mind," she said, accepting the tissue I handed her. "Far as I could see, it weren't no different than any other day."

"Did you see him this morning?"

"No, but he a'ways is an early riser. Me, I like my coffee and a bit of TV in the mornin'. Jesse goes to his office for some prayer time before he answers e-mails and calls from folks in need. I don't usually see him until he comes home for suppa."

"How about problems with one of the congregation, or money problems?"

Mrs. Jefferson choked out a laugh. "We don't worry about such things, honey. If Jesse had extra, it would go into helpin' someone who needed it more. No, we used to livin' simple. But now that you mention it, his prayin' lately had been on someone special. He'd only say that he was wrestlin' with a problem that needed prayer. And then I found this." She held out a crumbled scribbled note.

Surprised, I read it and asked, "This is your husband's handwriting?"

"Looks like he wrote in a hurry, but yes, it's his," she said, blowing her nose on a tissue, "I don't have no idea what it means."

The words were scrawled in a quick motion, the pressure of the pen deep into the paper, as if he'd held the paper on his knee when he wrote it. It said, "
I tried to save them. Geronimo
…." Then nothing.

"Where did you find this?"

"In his pocket."

"What made you think to look in his pocket?"

"Oh, honey, I done washed that man's clothes for near on twenty years and I always turn out the pockets to collect the coins and such before they can get inta the spin cycle. He was forever writing on scraps of paper, scripture for this sermon or that and sometimes little snippets from the Song of Solomon," she stopped and tried to swallow, tears gathering in her eyes. "He knew I'd find them. Those little love notes always brightened my washday, that's for sure." She accepted the dry tissue. "Thanks, honey. Sweetest man ever born, my Jesse."

"If you don’t mind," I said, standing, "I'll give this to Chief Stone."

"You take it, honey," she said, patting my hand as if I were the one in need of comfort. "It doesn't have anything to do with me."

Two women rushed to gather Mrs. Jefferson into their arms; the praying and crying following me as I hurried back into the cool, dark interior of the sanctuary.

The medical examiner had arrived and Ian Tom and Caleb stood to one side quietly conversing.

Caleb reached out and drew me into the circle. "The M.E. will need to determine exact cause of death, but I've already told Ian about the nasty gash on the back of Jesse's head."

"Don't forget the ladder," I said, "which may or may not have been moved."

Caleb scrubbed at his buzz cut and explained about the position of the ladder.

"They know better than to touch a crime scene," Ian said. "They'll be reprimanded."

"Ian, they're young and both are parishioners of Jesse's church," I said.

Ian shook his head. "I know it must've been a shock seeing their pastor like that, but they're on duty and they know the rules. What else do we have?"

"Mrs. Jefferson said he'd been praying for someone special, and she gave me a note from his pocket," I said, handing it to Caleb. I explained about the pastor's habit of leaving wash-day love notes to his wife.

Ian looked down and pinched the bridge of his nose. "My wife used to leave things like that in my lunch box."

Caleb read the note and asked, "Do you have any idea what this means?"

"Not me," I said.

I was still having odd dreams, ones where I was underwater and trying to converse with the old Apache who always managed to work in a repeat of the name,
Geronimo
. And here it was again. But Caleb was frankly suspicious of dreams so I went with a question that had been bothering me.

"Ian, why
did
you put Jesse Jefferson on the list? His wife said he didn't care all that much about money."

Ian looked around as if someone might be listening. "Let's take this conversation outside."

"Right," Caleb said, turning for the front door.

We walked into the starkly bright sunlight and shouting from an angry mob.

When a rock whizzed by his head, Ian ducked and swore. "What the hell?"

A mike boom from one of Tucson's news channels angled out over our heads, catching me in the middle of saying, "What's gotten into these people?"

Caleb moved me behind his back, stepped forward and held up his hand. When the discontented mob quieted, he pitched his voice to be heard by the last person in the back.

"I don't know what you've heard, but I am confirming that our department is investigating the death of Pastor Jefferson. You will not hear anything more until we have something to report, so I am asking all of you to please go home and let us do our jobs!"

No one moved. The crowd appeared to be holding their collective breaths―or they were thinking of who to throw the next rock at.

Using the brief silence to get in a question, the reporter shouted, "Did Pastor Jefferson hang himself because he was responsible for the unsolved shooting at the Miracle Faith Church?"

That started the shouting all over again.

Stunned, Caleb and I exchanged glances. So this is why Jesse's church family was here. Someone had leaked the death as a suicide to the press. No wonder his parishioners were angry.

Caleb turned to Ian. "See if you can talk some sense into this crowd. I'm going to get some smoke guns."

Caleb touched my elbow and I followed him to his SUV. He used his remote to unlock the doors and rummaging around the back, pulled out his megaphone and the smoke guns. Handing the smoke guns to me, he said, "I don't want to raise the level of paranoia, so give these to the patrolmen furthest away from the crowd, then go after that newsman. I think he's from a Tucson channel. Find out…"

"I'm on it," I said, and took off to find the Wishbone patrolmen. Reminding them of their chief's instructions, I headed for the brightly painted blue and white Channel 4 truck; complete with all the satellite equipment they would need for an instant upload to their TV station.

I yanked open the slider on the truck and scrambled inside. A driver, cameraman and a reporter were huddled around a monitor and jerked around in surprise at my bold entrance. I almost laughed at their fright―as if I might have a gun. Then again, this was Arizona where it's legal to carry a sidearm without a permit, but I wasn't. Not today, anyway.

"Shit," one of them said, reaching for the lock on the sliding door.