The Psalmist (15 page)

 

PART TWO

Praying Woman

 

“Behold, I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed—­in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.”

—
­1
C
ORINTHIANS 15:51

“Sometimes the question is complicated and the answers simple.”

—­
D
R.
S
EUSS

 

Chapter 24

S
UNDAY,
M
ARCH 19

O
VERNIGHT, A LIGHT
snow dusted the roads, lawns, and fields of Tidewater County. As the sun rose over the farmland, fog hung like Spanish moss in the loblolly pines by the coast. A low thunder rumbled at intervals, making odd sonic reverberations through the bayside cliffs and coves.

Luke Bowers had asked Aggie to call in two extra ushers and to print fifty additional church bulletins, anticipating a larger than normal crowd. But no one expected the attendance to more than double. By the time Betsy Anders began her organ prelude, the pews were filled end-­to-­end, with more than thirty ­people standing in the back of the church and in the doorways. Only the pew where the dead woman had been found, set off by tape marks on the floor, was empty.

“I must say,” Luke began, “I have never seen so many ­people here on the third Sunday in March.” A nervous titter rippled through the room; the sanctuary air was scented with damp hair and clothing. “I suspect that a few of you may have come here this morning more out of curiosity than a desire to worship. And that's fine. I'm happy we're all here, together. Which is a roundabout way of bringing me to today's message.

“This week,” he said, glancing at his notes, “our church, and our community, was visited by tragedy. It came to us under cover of darkness early Tuesday and slipped away unseen, and without explanation. In the hours and days since then, many of you have asked the same questions—­of yourselves, of one another, and of me. Who was the young woman found here in our sanctuary Tuesday morning? What path brought her to us under such unfortunate circumstances? Why did this evil visit our gentle little community of Tidewater?

“We ask these questions because it is our nature as human beings to want to explain the events in our lives, in particular the tragedies. And it is our nature to expect that such events always
have
explanations.

“But what happens when there are no simple answers to our questions? Or when the explanations don't appear as quickly or as clearly as we would like? That's what I'd like to talk about this morning. Because, sometimes, what is human nature and what is God's nature are two very different things.

“We meet here this morning on the shores of hope—­not in despair or confusion, but through the grace of God. Often, we talk here in this room on Sunday mornings about faith. And living with questions is a necessary part of our faith. Did you know that Jesus was questioned more than eighty times in the Gospels? Our questions remind us that a questioning faith is a living faith. When our faith has run out of questions, it becomes not faith but dogma.

“The scriptures implore us to seek, but they also invite us to ask questions. In the famous passage in Matthew, the apostle says, ‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you.' But Scripture also tells us that we must learn to be discerning in
what
we ask—­and to be patient as we wait for answers. Faith is full of trials and tribulations, in other words, and it is often through these trials and tribulations that we grow in the spirit.”

Several times during his sermon Luke noticed a round-­faced man with smoky blue eyes and a dark buzz-­cut sitting on the aisle end of a side pew, wearing a dark raincoat. The man appeared to be staring, opening his eyes wider, into small saucers, whenever Luke looked at him. There were no rules on eye contact during sermons, and Luke had drawn a few “starers” over the years—­nearly always women, including those Charlotte called his “groupies.” This one was beginning to make him uncomfortable, so he finally stopped looking that way.

“Our questions sometimes become the central mystery of our faith,” he continued. “And the way those questions are answered—­or not answered—­sometimes shapes our beliefs. But we must remember that what we receive, when we embrace faith and patience, is often the gift of wisdom. So let us ask our questions. But let us be patient and listen—­and really listen—­as we wait for answers.”

Luke paused for effect; in the silence, a long rumble of thunder shook the floorboards of the church building. He looked out across the congregation.

“I think even those
not
wishing to listen heard that,” he said.

As if in reply, the thunder rumbled again, louder and longer. A wave of laughter rippled through the sanctuary.

“So. We continue to ask questions,” Luke said, in summary. “But as we wait for answers, let's use this uncertain time as an opportunity to grow—­to deepen our capacity for patience, faith, and understanding. And to deepen our commitment to this community, to our families, and to one another. Let's remember that evil can reach us anywhere, as it did this week. But when it does, we must meet evil with grace.

“Now, please join me as we pray for the woman who was killed and left here in our sanctuary on Tuesday.” Looking quickly out at the congregation, he again noticed the intense-­looking man with the crew cut. The man's eyes met his—­pale blue, unrelenting.

Luke bowed his head in prayer.

F
ILING FROM THE
church, congregants and visitors waited in line to greet Pastor Luke. Charlotte stood by the adjacent doors, meeting guests with her easy cheer. There were many here Luke had never seen in church before: the impeccably dressed Congressman Morton Sand and his heavily made-­up wife Carlotta; Donald McFarland, the tall, cherubic-­faced mayor of Tidewater, and his tiny wife Petra, who reminded Luke of an elf; Buddy Read, the leathery skinned charter boat captain who always referred to him as “Pastor Bers”; State's Attorney Wendell Stamps, his lovely wife Janine, and their two tall blond daughters; Anna Havram, seller of computer cartridges, whose small eyes seemed to light up with amusement whenever anyone spoke to her; the philanthropists Harold and Blanche Ganders, a charming British ­couple who owned the county's largest home and whose hobby was drinking; the snowy-­haired painter Wendy Singh, whose portrait of Eleanor Mondale was owned by the National Portrait Gallery; several jean-­clad Buntings, from the newspaper, one of whom tried persistently, but unsuccessfully, to interview Luke; the pouty-­lipped Debbie Cosgrove, who managed the movie theater, and her current fiancé Bobby Bell, who uncharacteristically wore a suit jacket, but also sported a black eye this morning; and the severe-­looking ser­vice station owner John Patterson, who, as always, seemed to be waiting for things to end.

Also present, but uninterested in chatting today, were former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his wife Joyce, who lived the next county over, and who came here occasionally because they liked the old church building and its perch above the bay.

But the peculiar, crew-­cut man in the black raincoat was nowhere to be seen; Luke wondered how he'd managed to do that—­to vanish.

Bringing up the rear of the line was Amy Hunter, her army jacket collar turned up unevenly, her hair sticking out on one side.

“Pastor,” she said. “When you have a second, could I talk with you?”

“Of course. Oh, Charlotte, have you met Amy Hunter?” he said, introducing them. “State police homicide investigator?”

Charlotte offered a limp handshake. “Enchanted,” she said.

Luke gave her a frown. Charlotte mouthed the word
What?

“Good sermon,” Hunter said, looking out at the parking lot with restless eyes.

“Thanks.”

“I imagine ­people
do
ask you a lot of questions,” she said, assessing Charlotte for a second. “And expect you to know the answers.”

“Well, as long as they don't ask me about probability and statistics, I do all right.”

He saw that she kept glancing at the sheriff's deputies, standing out in the entrance drive.

“Could we meet somewhere away from the church?”

“Sure, I don't see why not.”

“How about the Blue Crab Diner, in thirty minutes?” she said.

“Okay.”

When he looked back at Charlotte, she was glaring at him.

G
IL
R
ANKIN WAI
TED
in his car in a far corner of the parking lot under a sycamore tree, as Kirby Moss emerged from the side door of the church and needled his way through the vehicles, looking conspicuous in his dark raincoat and 1950s haircut. The man wasn't as subtle as he thought.

Rankin watched the ­people streaming into the parking lot. Young families, old ­couples.
Clueless souls
. Everywhere he went, he saw ­people like this, it seemed, wearing nearly the same clothes, the same expressions.
Not paying attention. Corrupted and afraid. None of them has an inkling what's going to happen. Thinking they're so civilized when they treat their poorest citizens so shamefully.

Shame has a smell, too.

Rankin suddenly realized that these were not even his own thoughts he was thinking, they were the Client's thoughts.

Jesus Christ!
What the hell was happening? Would he eventually not be able to tell the difference?

He looked up again at Moss. He could read the expression on his face well before he reached the car. No need to ask what had happened. Moss opening the passenger door, sliding in next to him. “Not there,” Moss said, as if he was telling him something.

“Didn't think so.”

Moss reached for his seat belt but had trouble getting it to reach all the way across. He tried twice and then a third time before he got it.

So we'll wait, Gil Rankin thought. Okay. We'll just wait a little while longer. And he drove away as if he were in the car alone.

S
HIP
CALLED AS
Hunter was headed for the diner on Main Street. “You were right,” he said. “Jackpot.”

For a moment she didn't know what he was talking about. Then she got it.

“You visited the town house?”

“Yep. Nothing inside. But I found muddy boots in the garage. The sole patterns seem to be a match, or close to it,” he said. “How'd you know?”

“A hunch. What'd you do with them?”

“Nothing. I'm standing outside right now. Do you want me to bag them and bring them in?”

“No. Summon the evidence techs, if you would.”

“Sure.”

Hunter went silent for several seconds, figuring what had happened. Then she said, “Okay, yes, call the techs. Have them go over the garage and the town house thoroughly, inch by inch. Take their time. I'm more concerned about what else might've been left there than the boots.”

“Ten-­four,” he said. Sounding uncertain.

“And don't broadcast it. If possible, don't let the sheriff know.”

 

Chapter 25

L
UKE PARKED TWO
spaces from Hunter's white Camry in front of the Blue Crab Diner. His eyes found her in a booth, facing away from the door, two file folders on the table. The smell of hamburgers and fried potatoes made him realize he was hungry.

“Hello again.” She half rose to shake. “How was your trip?”

“In a word: relaxing.”

“Excuse my enthusiasm last night,” Hunter said as Luke sat across from her. “I guess I was freaking out a little.”

“No harm in a little freaking out,” he said. “Jesus had a freaking out with some money changers, as you might recall. Whipped them right out of the temple.”

“Good. Makes me feel better.”

Luke smiled.

“Anyway, you were right,” she said. “There are three cases now. Three that we know about.”

Luke waited. Hunter's seemingly unquenchable intensity was, again, a little contagious.

They ordered coffee and bagels. After the waitress left, Hunter began telling him about the Jane Doe case in West Virginia, then opened one of the file folders and slid him photos. They showed a bullet wound on the left side of the woman's head, just below the ear, and the exit wound through the top of her right ear. Then the numbers on her lower back.

“Guess this scuttles the grand jury plans,” Luke said.

“It's probably a few hours from becoming a federal case,” Hunter said. “I'm just being careful how I proceed. I'm a little concerned about sheriff and the deputy.”

“What could they do now?”

“I don't know, but I don't trust Calvert. I know he wants to come out of this benefiting somehow. In a big way, if possible. And he's been talking with the state's attorney.” Luke turned the photos face down as the coffee and bagels arrived.

“Of course, we're still missing a few of the essentials,” Hunter said, reaching for her bagel.

“You don't know who the woman I came upon is, in other words. Or why she was left in the church.”

“Yes, those essentials.” She spread cream cheese on half a toasted bagel. So, tell me more about Jackson Pynne,” she said. “Is he a violent man?”

“Violent? Not really.” Luke thought about it as he tipped sugar into his coffee. “He has a temper. But it tends to percolate awhile before boiling over—­although then it can be pretty scary.” He sipped his coffee. “Which isn't to say that I think he did this.”

“Because you don't think he did.”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because of who he is. And because of how he acted when we talked.”

“But what if he was pushed—­if his temper boiled over.”

Luke tilted his head, as if to say,
It's possible, but not likely.

Hunter told him about the new evidence found at the cottage on Oyster Creek—­the cigarette butt and the shoe prints, both seeming to link Jackson Pynne to the killing.

Luke listened, surprised but unconvinced. Too obvious, he thought.

Why would someone want to frame Jackson, though?

He was trying to find a less obvious thread linking the different cases, some kind of unifying motive that would reveal not only what the perpetrator wanted them to find but also what he
didn't
want found.

He wondered, too, if Hunter was weighing the question of disclosure. If they released information about the Psalms now, could it prevent another murder? Or would it just prompt the killer to become smarter and change his M.O.? Or spook him into disappearing, spoiling whatever chance they had of catching him?

“It's odd, though, isn't it?” he said.

“What is?”

“The dissimilarities. I mean, if the numbers were calling cards, why were they left in such inconsistent ways?”

Hunter hunched forward, elbows on the table. “Okay, what are you thinking, then? That it's not the same person?”

“Or maybe this is just the way that he's decided to reveal what he's doing.”

She nodded for him to go on.

“I mean, look at the three calling cards we know about. The second one we found—­paint on a corner of the glass—­was more subtle than the numbers carved into her hand.”

“Okay.”

“And the third even more so than the second.”

“So maybe that's a deliberate pattern, you're saying?”

“It could be. I mean, if these are calling cards, it's highly unlikely that detectives in Delaware would have looked at those numbers on the glass and thought anything about the Book of Psalms. It's just not something that would have ever entered their minds.”

“Okay, agreed.”

“And probably less likely in West Virginia. You said the local officials there didn't think the numbers meant anything. They thought they were a tattoo. It sounds like they never would have said, ‘Gee, I wonder if that could be a reference to the book of Psalms.' ”

Hunter nodded. “Okay, so, in other words, without first knowing what happened here, there's no way of figuring out the other two.”

“That's right.”

“And you're saying it was done that way intentionally—­progressively apparent, so to speak. So that they would only become calling cards after the fact?”

“It's an idea.”

“Why, though?”

Luke shrugged, handing back the photos.
That was the question
. “I guess because he doesn't want the pattern to be discovered until later.”

“Maybe not until after he's stopped.”

“Maybe.”

Neither of them spoke for a while. A gregarious ­couple from church came over to say hello, and Hunter closed the file folder. She opened the other folder as soon as they walked away.

“This is Virginia,” she said. “John Doe. I wanted you to see it. One of our investigators talked with the lead detective there. There was no number left behind in this case. But, I don't know—­ I have a funny feeling about it. There's one very odd detail, which seems to be a different sort of calling card. Have a look.”

Luke skimmed through the printouts in the case file.

John Doe. White male. Age 45-­55, 5' 10”, 193 pounds. Spotted by a motorist in the woods beside a rural highway in north-­central Virginia. Wearing dark suit pants, a white dress shirt and a print tie.

On the surface, he saw little linking this to the Tidewater case, except that the victim had been mutilated and his identity was unknown. The nature of the mutilation seemed meant as a message: the man's upper and lower lips had been sliced off with a sharp blade, maybe an X-­Acto knife, according to the medical examiner, and his tongue had been cut out. The state police investigator told Fischer the killing was probably drug-­related.

“Detectives in West Virginia think their Jane Doe was drug-­related, too,” Hunter said. “An assumption that probably kept them from casting a wider net.”

“So maybe the perpetrator wants it to
seem
like a drug case?”

“Possibly. Which would mean less chance of connecting it with the other murders. At least for a while.”

Luke nodded, figuring if the Tidewater Jane Doe came from somewhere else, the others might have, too. Maybe the dump sites were selected randomly. Another way of obscuring what the perpetrator was actually doing. Whatever that was.

He glanced out at the parking lot and noticed that an unmarked Crown Vic was now parked in the space between Hunter's car and his. The driver, sitting behind the wheel, seemed to be watching them.

“Don't look now,” he said, closing the file, “but I think your friend the deputy is outside.”

Hunter waited before glancing, discreetly.

Beak Stilfork elaborately got out of his patrol car and looked carefully at the other cars in the lot, as if counting them. He came into the restaurant with his peculiar, stiff-­legged gait. Taking a quick inventory of the patrons, half nodding as his eyes moved past Luke.

He talked to the waitress behind the register without smiling—­ordering coffee to go, most likely—­showing his long-­nosed profile. Finally, he walked over.

“Sergeant,” he said. “Pastor.”

Luke stood and shook his hand, then sat down again..

“Good crowd this morning.”

“Yes, it was,” Luke said, good-­naturedly. “Much larger than I'd have expected.”

Stilfork's eyes went to the folder on the seat bench beside Hunter. Then to the other file on the table.

“Here for lunch?”

Luke smiled. “Just coffee and bagels.”

Hunter raised her eyes. “How'd you make out with the vandals last night?”

“Say what?”

“I saw you parked outside my apartment building at about two-­forty in the morning. I assume you were staking out vandals?”

Stilfork's eyes turned to Bowers's. Then he nodded goodbye and left without saying another word . He paid for his coffee and returned to the patrol car.

Luke waited until he finally drove off before opening the case file.

Images of the crime scene and victim were in a separate envelope inside. Eight were crime scene photos, six from the medical examiner's office. Hunter was right. There were no numbers, or any other sort of calling card, besides the mutilation itself. But he recognized two similarities between this case and the others. There was only a small amount of blood at the scene, and the wounds had been postmortem, according to the medical examiner. “So he was killed and mutilated somewhere else and dumped here.”

“Yeah. That's the odd detail,” she said. “That's why it feels connected.”

Hunter sipped her coffee. She set the cup back in the saucer.

The front-­on photos were gruesome—­the man's mouth open grotesquely, an oval of coagulated blood where his lips had been. Dried trails of blood down his neck and shoulder. Eyes closed.. The victim didn't look like a drug dealer, let alone an addict. His appearance suggested an attorney or an accountant.

Luke imagined what the killer had done: parking somewhere off the highway, carrying the man's body into the woods, propping him against a tree. But the Virginia victim was a big man; it would have required two ­people, probably, to carry him. Surprisingly, he saw nothing in the report about shoe-­print evidence.

“Wait,” Hunter said, touching his wrist. She flipped back through the photos and pulled one out: the man's clothing and watch, laid out on a stainless steel table at the medical examiner's office.

“My God,” she said. “I completely missed that.”

“What.”

“Look at these two pictures. This one was probably taken several hours after the first.”

Luke studied the images she'd set side by side in front of them.

“Do you see what's wrong with them?”

At first he didn't. Then it became obvious.

“The wristwatch.”

“Yeah. The wristwatch. The watch shows the exact same time in both pictures.”

Meaning it had stopped. Or been stopped
. Luke drew a breath.

“Let me see what this says about the watch.” Luke waited as Hunter paged through the CSI case report, her eyes intently scanning lines of text; he felt her energy like heat off a summer pavement.

“ ‘Wristwatch, stopped, twelve twenty-­three. Watch intact,' ” she read.

That was all. None of the local detectives had attached any significance to it. Just a stray oddity. But Luke already had his phone out and was Googling Psalm 12.