The Psalmist (8 page)

 

Chapter 12

“W
HAT DO
I
think?” Charlotte asked, gazing at Luke over her wineglass. “I think we ought get away for a ­couple of days.”

“It's not a good time for that, is it?”

“Why? Couldn't Mel fill in if anything happens?”

Actually it
wasn't
such a bad time. He had no appointments, and Melissa Walker—­“Mel,” the assistant pastor—­was in town, so there would always be a pastor on call, as the church promised.

“It'd be good for you, anyway,” she said. “We'll escape for two nights, just the three of us.”

Luke glanced at Sneakers, who was lying on his left side, his legs fully extended, sound asleep by the heat vent with his favorite toy, a slobber-­stained tiny reindeer. He offered no opinion.

“I've checked on reservations,” Charlotte added. “We could be gone Thursday and Friday nights, be back in plenty of time Saturday for you to prepare.”

“And where would we escape to?”

“The mountains. Me-­ville,” she said.

Meaning Charlottesville. Other ­people called Thomas Jefferson's old haunt “C-­ville,” but Charlotte liked to call it “Me-­ville.” Being Charlotte and all. Fortunately, Luke was the only one who ever got to hear her say this. He suspected that if she tried it on anyone else, it might sound pretentious; to him, it was like hearing his favorite song from high school.

“I could do some research at Monticello,” she said. “You could hike the mountains with Sneakers and polish your sermon. Or else drive down to the university and ogle the coeds.”

“Hard to resist that.”

“Yes, I know.”

“Actually, I think I've forgotten how to ogle.”

“Of course you have.”

She went into the kitchen for more wine, comfortable in her Maine moose pj's and slipper socks. Sneakers lifted his head, a vacant look on his face; he lowered it only when Charlotte had returned.

“So you want to squire me away from all this for a ­couple days,” he said.

“Squire?”

“
Take
me away.”

“I'd gladly squire, if you insist.”

“Maybe later.”

“It'll be good for us,” she said. “Good for the soul.”

“Yes.” It was a pet phrase of Charlotte's, and one that Luke liked, although he had once made the mistake of asking where it came from and she'd told him it was a line from a Bob Seger song—­which spoiled it just a bit.

“Anyway, if I didn't try
some
thing, I'd be an enabler,” she said. “And then how would I live with myself?”

“What would you be enabling?”

“You're a smart man, but you have a rare obsessive disorder, you know. And I can see that it's starting to flare up.”

“How can you tell?”

“Well—­those ‘Do Not Disturb' signs in your eyes. That's one clue.”

“Ah.”

“It'll be good to get away. For all three of us.”

He looked at Sneakers. She was right, of course. ­People were still eyeing him a little too long when they saw him at the grocery or the pharmacy. Something had gotten into Tidewater County, it seemed, a certain kind of evil, and with it a sense of suspicion and distrust that Luke hadn't seen here before.

He looked out toward the bay. A high moon glazed the marshlands.

“Just let the investigators handle things for a while,” Charlotte said, in a gentle, chiding tone, pulling her legs up onto the sofa. “I'm sure Tidewater County will be okay for two days without you.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. Plus, getting away would give us a chance to talk about
things
,” she added, and her blue eyes seemed to soften, becoming a place and a promise; it was the same look that had inadvertently seduced him the first time he'd met her nine years earlier.

“Ah yes,” he said. “Things.”

She raised her wineglass and they toasted. Moments later Charlotte looked out the window, and he noticed that her eyes had moistened, as if her mood had been momentarily subverted into some troubled private harbor. She'd been doing that on occasion lately. But each time he asked if anything was wrong, her face brightened quickly and she changed the subject.

It often struck Luke how easily Charlotte had been able to adapt to the role of a pastor's wife—­at Sunday ser­vices and at congregation gatherings. But, in fact, Charlotte's spiritual passions were rooted less in religion than in music and literature and out there, in nature; it was part of her reason for wanting to visit the mountains. Her family's religious background had been weirdly eclectic: her dad was raised Unitarian, her mother Jewish, and the two somehow seemed to cancel each other out; when he met her, she'd been reading the texts of medieval mystics. But it was the silence and subtlety of changing seasons, of the landscape, the sky, the wind and water, that quietly lit her eyes and seemed to give her clarity, as if she had found her own way of measuring grace.

“I'll check with Mel tomorrow,” Luke said. “If she's okay, let's do it.”

“Good.”

She smiled warmly and they touched glasses again.

“You've already booked us, haven't you?”

She shrugged, turning her eyes evasively to the television.

T
HE LEAD STORY
on the ten o'clock news was, again, the weather.

“Snow Way!” Mindi Bunting, the energetic local anchor, proclaimed. “That's right, get out your snow shovels one more time, ­people! More of the white stuff is headed to Tidewater County this weekend! All of which is leading county residents to wonder if winter will ever end!”

A brief report about the “church killing” followed, beginning with video of Sheriff's Deputy “Beak” Stilfork ducking under the crime tape, moving with a stiff, jerky motion as if he were in a silent movie, then turning and staring disapprovingly at the camera.

“Police continue to follow leads, but still have not identified the ‘mystery woman' who was found dead in the Tidewater Methodist Church early Tuesday morning.

“The Sheriff's Department today confirmed that the woman was the victim of foul play but released no new details on the case.”

“ 'Mystery woman,” Charlotte said.

“Yes, I know.”

The scene shifted to State's Attorney Wendell Stamps, walking out of the press conference at the Public Safety Complex, looking cool as can be.

“State's Attorney Wendell Stamps, seen here at the Public Safety Complex today, and Maryland State Police homicide investigator Amy Hunter, say they are following several leads, but declined to elaborate. One source told
Eyewitness News at Ten
that the woman died of a .22 caliber gunshot wound to the chest. However, we are unable to provide independent confirmation.”

The camera zoomed in on Hunter, wearing her army jacket, carrying a thick binder under her right arm as she rushed from the conference room into the corridor, eyes downcast. Then they repeated the clip twice.

“Is that her?” Charlotte asked. “The head investigator?”

“That's her.”

“She looks like she's seventeen.”

“She's fourteen,” Luke said. “But mature for her age.”

“Ha ha.”

The segment ended with the clip of Deputy Stilfork again, his odd-­featured face turning toward the camera and beginning to scowl.

Charlotte muted the sound as the news went to commercial. “So what
aren't
they saying?”

“Pretty much everything. But that's only because they still don't know anything. Although Sergeant Hunter seemed very interested today when I told her about Jackson Pynne.”

“Really.”

“What?”

“You call her
Ser
geant Hunter?”

“Well. I don't know that I do. I guess I just did.”

Charlotte got up to wash out her wineglass, an action meant to change the subject. Sneakers lifted his head and groggily followed her, in case she needed any help, although his tail hung listlessly. Charlotte was funny about women becoming too friendly with him, sometimes displaying what seemed a preemptive jealousy.

When Charlotte and Sneakers returned to the living room, Luke said, “Where was Frederick Douglass, by the way, on the day Thomas Jefferson died?”

She tucked her legs up on the sofa, gazed out toward the still-­darkening bay. The book she was currently researching was on Douglass and Jefferson. Sneakers turned in two circles on the throw rug before settling. After a moment, Charlotte gave him her sweet smile.

“Douglass was living in Baltimore when Jefferson died,” she said. “He was only six years old.”

“I bet I can tell you where Douglass was on the day John Adams died.”

She laughed. “Funny man.”

Every once in a while Luke felt an urge to demonstrate that he had some sense of American history, too. That the second and third presidents of the United States had both died on July 4, 1826, within a few hours of one another, was a detail that he found endlessly interesting. Coincidences fascinated him.

Charlotte clicked off the television. She was frowning at him strangely.

“What is it?” A look of deep concern seemed to consume her face. “No, tell me. What is it? What's wrong?”

“You're not looking so well,” she said. “I think you may need an emergency therapy session.”

“Oh,” he said. “Really?”

“Yes.” She had become Dr. Nicely again, Luke's expensive sex therapist, who made house calls, one of their favorite recurring role plays. “I won't know for certain until we have a look, but I'm getting a little concerned,” she said.

Luke smiled, but Charlotte, fully in character now, would not smile back.

“Maybe you're right,” he said. “Maybe I do need a session.”

“Yes.” Charlotte stood and her eyes nodded toward the bedroom. “Let's go into the examining room and have a look. I'm getting very worried.”

“S
HIT!”
A
MY
H
UNTER
said, gesturing emphatically at the television. “What ‘sources' told you about the caliber?”

Hunter's long-­haired tuxedo cat Winston watched alertly from his perch atop the bookcase. They were alone in her apartment above the marina, case files and crime photos stacked neatly on the coffee table. A small empty pizza box from Domino's was on the stove, and the last two inches of a bottle of red wine on the table.

Hunter knew that the church case was about to turn a corner. She wasn't sold on the Psalms verse, but she had a gut feeling about Jackson Pynne. She didn't like it, though, that someone was leaking information to the media. Was this the sheriff, she wondered, trying to keep her off-­balance? Who else could it be?

“What do you think, Winnie, should I try to extend an olive branch to him in the morning?” Winston sashayed through her legs, swishing his tail against her. “Of course, it's not so easy when he won't return my calls, is it?”

Winston made his favorite comment, a superior-­sounding
ellll!
that often sounded to her like “Hell!” He trotted importantly back to the bedroom, tail pointed straight up, as if he didn't have time for such concerns.

Hunter drank the rest of the red wine straight from the bottle. She sat for a long time that evening on her porch in the dark, watching the marina and the stars. How much longer would it take to wrap this case? To find what was behind the numbers? In three weeks she would celebrate her thirty-­first birthday—­although
celebrate
was not the right word. She wasn't big on birthdays, or any holidays, for that matter. Holidays made her uneasy, particularly the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners in Pennsylvania, where her brother's wife and children always became the center of attention. Last year, Ship had suggested the two of them go out for dinner on Thanksgiving and then catch a movie. She'd almost agreed. Maybe this year. Her mother would send her a Hallmark card for her birthday, with a check inside for $150. It would arrive one day before her birthday. Her cousin Richard from California, who still wasn't sure of the date of her birthday, had already sent this year's card. It normally arrived three to five weeks early. The only other card would be from Ben Shipman, a novelty card that would inevitably make her laugh.

Hunter had a hard time sleeping that night. She couldn't turn off her thoughts—­wondering if the sheriff or someone from his office was slipping details of the case to the media. Several times she was awakened by the wind, gusting rain against her windows. Once, she was jolted out of sleep by her telephone, which rang once and stopped. “Unknown Caller.” Was it a wrong number or someone trying to rattle her?
Don't be paranoid
, she told herself.

Wide-­awake now, she looked out at the darkened marina through the rain-­beaded windows of her living room, the boat masts tilting from side to side. For a few minutes the raw sweep of nature conjured in her the happy energies of childhood—­before what her mother referred to as the “unfortunate incident.” Hunter's thoughts drifted back to their single-­family brick house, the hopscotch sidewalks and afternoon lawn mowers of suburban Pennsylvania. She still drew strength from those memories. But her ambitious personality always seemed to propel her forward to whatever was at hand.

She padded to her study and checked e-­mails, saw one from Shipman. Sent at 10:32
P.M.
It was just a subject line:
Meet for breakfast?

Hunter debated calling him then; but no, not at three-­fourteen in the morning.

She lay awake in bed awhile longer, her eyes open, her thoughts shuffling restlessly. Finally she closed her eyes and waited for sleep.

T
WELVE MILES AWAY,
Gil Rankin walked on a gravel driveway alongside Jimmy Creek. He noticed lights in distant farmhouse windows, the way the ice in the wind made a glassy rattle through the marsh grasses, the long casts of moonlight on the creek water, the stealthy movement of predators, and potential routes of escape. Rankin was in his element at night, moving, hearing everything clearly, breathing the cold, bracing air, figuring out exactly what he had to do here in Tidewater County.