It was after one thirty before Hollis crawled into her bed. She was conscious of the fleeting hope that there would be no nightmares tonight, but she didn’t dwell on that.
She didn’t dwell on anything, in fact. Within minutes of turning out the lamp on her nightstand, she was sound asleep.
Saturday
Despite his calling, nobody who knew him would ever call Reverend Marcus Pilate a gentle man. Or even a particularly holy man. He took care of the administrative duties of running the Second Baptist Church of Clarity, a job at which he excelled, but when it came to having a reassuring bedside manner, Pilate was somewhat lacking in compassion and sympathy, Christian or otherwise.
Which is probably why Perla Cross’s relatives ushered him out of the house where Joe was staying after he barely had the time to tell the grieving widower that Perla was in a better place now, she was at peace, he needed to forgive her killer for the sake of his own immortal soul and, by the way, would he be donating any of her personal belongings to the “yard” sale the church was having to help fund its highly successful daycare center and get a start on funding for next year’s new roof? Shoes were always very popular.
Joe looked bewildered, even stricken, and then buried his face in his hands, sobbing, which he’d clearly been doing a lot since the death of his wife.
Two of Perla’s sisters, excruciatingly polite, escorted Reverend Pilate from the house, offering only the information that “someone” in the family would be making the funeral arrangements soon, and that while they were very grateful for his kindness, the family would of course be making those arrangements with the church where the Ferguson family had always attended services.
Which was not his.
Reverend Pilate didn’t exactly feel appreciated in Clarity. He never had. A competitive man, he had never quite reconciled himself to the fact that the Cane Creek Baptist Church, which was on the opposite end of town from his church and was not, in fact, on or even near a creek, had a very popular preacher in Reverend Martin Webb, who had cornered the lion’s share of Baptists.
Including the Ferguson family. Every blessed one of them.
His own congregation was on the small side, as was his church. Neither of which matched his more lofty ambitions.
So Pilate could be forgiven for a pang of jealousy at the size of the Cane Creek parsonage, discreetly set back from the road and the church to offer its occupants privacy. It was at least twice as big as his own. Of course, Reverend Martin Webb had a family, so Pilate supposed that accounted for it. There was a wife and—three kids? Two? Pilate wasn’t really sure. They seemed interchangeable to him, all blond hair and tanned limbs and dirty faces.
But Webb’s larger family certainly didn’t account for the truly excellent landscaping around both the church and the parsonage, or the very nice and practically new Buick Webb drove, or the fact that his congregation had sent Webb and his wife on a cruise the previous year because they thought the couple deserved a vacation.
Some things in life were just not fair.
Reverend Pilate got in his five-year-old Ford and headed back toward town and his own church, very deliberately not looking at the Cane Creek church or parsonage as he passed.
It was Saturday afternoon, and on Saturday afternoon he always supervised the Flower Ladies. They came every Saturday, with pails filled with flowers from their gardens, and made colorful arrangements around the church so everything would look pretty and fresh for Sunday services. Even in winter, they shared a greenhouse that continued to provide for the church.
He didn’t know anything at all about gardening but felt the need to assert his authority within his own church. Not that they needed his supervision; even Pilate had to admit that the three elderly but highly energetic ladies had been growing and arranging flowers since long before he was born. But he still felt he should offer a word here and there, ignoring the inevitable and absentminded “Yes, Reverend, of course,” response he always received before they continued doing just as they liked.
He parked his car in the accustomed place beside his tidy parsonage, spared a moment to wish he had an extra room to use as a study so that he wouldn’t feel he was always on duty while working on his sermons at the church, then sighed and walked across the gravel parking lot between the two buildings and went inside the church.
The Flower Ladies were busy, and he was just about to go supervise whether they liked it or not when his cell phone buzzed in his pocket.
He did not like ringtones. Especially the hymns.
He pulled the cell phone from his pocket and flipped it open, wasting a slightly bitter moment regretting that it wasn’t the latest model. Or even last year’s model. But it was functional, his church supplied it, and he was certainly not one to complain.
A text. Unknown name, unfamiliar number.
Wait for dark.
Huh. What was supposed to be happening after dark? Nothing that he knew of, and he’d checked his calendar just before leaving to visit Joe Cross and the Ferguson family.
Who would—
Kids, of course. The bane of his existence, kids. They probably thought he’d be outside with a flashlight come dark, and they could hide in the shrubbery or wherever and jump out and yell boo before running off. Laughing at him.
Idiot kids.
Reverend Marcus Pilate closed the phone with a snap and returned it to his pocket. He put the cryptic text out of his mind and checked his watch almost automatically.
Three o’clock.
Briskly, he moved forward to supervise.
—
HOLLIS LIFTED HERSELF up to sit on the table, frowning at the evidence boards now all set up in the conference room. They had spent most of the day doing what they could. In this room they had spent necessary hours sifting through and organizing all the information Mal and his deputies had gathered and getting a reasonable timeline up to study. They had even called in a few witnesses to the earlier “accidents” to re-interview, this time with at least one of the agents sitting in to ask a few behavior-specific questions.
The interviews hadn’t helped much, at least in part because word of just how gruesome the murder of Perla Cross had been not only flew around town seemingly with the speed of light but was also embellished with even more gruesome details, resulting in nervous witnesses who wanted to ask questions rather than answer them.
The whole town, it seemed, was busy connecting the dots of four strange accidents followed by a definite murder.
Hollis wondered if the killer knew, and was sure only that they should assume he did.
“Hey,” Cullen said suddenly. “It’s three o’clock.” He was looking at the rather large clock above the conference-room door.
Sheriff Gordon looked up from the file he had been studying with a frown. “Do we believe he’d kill three straight days?”
Hollis shook her head. “I don’t know what we should believe, except that he’s not likely to stop with Perla Cross. Our preliminary profile was pretty much turned on its ear even before the jet touched down. We thought we might know what was driving this unsub, and it just doesn’t fit anymore. So what’s driving him? Especially to do such extreme—and extremely painful—murders? Until we figure that out, I don’t see how we’ll have anything like a reliable profile.”
Still looking at her, the sheriff said, “When I talked to Jill about sending over her official autopsy report this afternoon, she said you two were there first thing this morning for the post.”
Hollis merely nodded, not about to say that after her discussion with Reese the previous evening, and despite the gift she truly believed had granted her an utterly peaceful night’s sleep, she had nevertheless been determined to reclaim at least some of the distance she had tried to keep between them. She thought she needed that right now, just as she needed to keep the focus of both of them on this investigation as much
as she possibly could.
And never mind that she hated attending autopsies.
DeMarco, who was also studying the evidence boards, but from a chair on the other side of the conference table, said almost absently, “I wouldn’t recommend that before breakfast. Or after breakfast.”
Hollis turned her head to meet the sheriff’s gaze. “Unless something unexpected shows up in the toxicology report, I don’t think we’ll learn anything more than we have from Perla Cross’s body. There was really only one anomaly Jill discovered in the postmortem.” She glanced over her shoulder at her partner. “And so far we haven’t figured out what it means.”
“What anomaly?”
“There were no ligature marks on her wrists or ankles, but there was something very like a ligature mark at her waist.”
Mal blinked. “Her waist?”
“Yeah. As if a cord or cable, and not all that thin, was tightened around her waist long enough to leave a ligature mark, even through her clothes. But since she was dressed, whatever it was never touched her bare skin, and so we don’t have anything distinctive about that mark. Except that it exists. And it was deep enough that Jill found fibers from Perla’s red blouse embedded in the ligature.”
“What the hell?”
“That was pretty much our reaction,” Hollis told him.
Kirby came into the conference room just then, accompanied by Deputy Emma Fletcher. The very young-looking agent seemed both tense and queasy, an expression explained by the very sympathetic deputy.
“The elevator company still hasn’t replaced the door to close the shaft where Karen Underwood was killed. And even though they removed the destroyed car and we put up that canvas curtain thing over the opening so people could walk past to the other elevator without looking in, there’s still . . . Well, it still looks pretty horrific in there. People are ignoring the crime scene tape and the curtain to look inside, Mal. And pictures. Some of them were taking cell pictures. We’ll be very lucky if they don’t post them on social media. Ghouls.”
“Dammit,” he muttered. “I can’t lock the door or forbid entrance to the building, not with the bank and other businesses there. But I can damned well get something more sturdy to use as a barrier and station a deputy at the barriers with orders to arrest anybody who tries to get past.” He reached for the phone.
Kirby sat down at the conference table and sent a brief smile to the deputy. “Thanks, Emma. I’ll be okay now.”
“Sure? You reacted more strongly to the elevator than you did when I took you and Cullen out to the Nash farm this morning. And since there’s been no rain lately, that field still looks . . . bad.” It didn’t smell too good, either. And it was drawing insects. And birds.
Cullen spoke up to say, “Yeah, I told Hank Taylor that he could plow it all up if he wanted to. I mean, since the doc has gathered everything she needed, including plenty of photos, we’ve seen whatever there is to see there, and we have the harvester down in the garage.” He paused. “I felt sort of . . . disrespectful saying he could just plow everything under. I think he felt the same way.”
“He’ll probably do it, though,” Emma offered. “If only to spare Sue the sight of that part of the field, since she can clearly see it from the house. Besides, it’s not like we can reasonably crawl all over the field picking up . . . bits . . . of Brady all mixed in with the corn and dirt. His arm and everything the doc collected is going to be cremated anyway, once she’s finished with her examination.”
“Still,” Kirby said rather faintly, “just . . . plowing the remains still out there under with dead cornstalks really does seem disrespectful.”
“Dust to dust,” DeMarco said, still looking at the evidence boards. “Or the cycle of life, if you prefer. Either way, our physical bodies do tend to end up back in the earth. With Brady Nash, unfortunately, it’s a more direct journey.”
He must have realized he was being stared at, or felt it, because he looked from his partner’s raised eyebrow to Kirby’s unhidden queasiness, to Cullen’s careful lack of expression, and settled finally on Deputy Emma Fletcher’s face and the various emotions that flitted across her pretty features.
“Don’t mince words, do you?” she said finally.
“Sorry. Just thinking out loud.”
Rather dry, Cullen said, “I don’t think that helps.”
“Did you attend a postmortem this morning after breakfast?” DeMarco demanded.
“Well, no.”
“All right then.” DeMarco returned his attention to the evidence board, not quite frowning.
The sheriff hung up the phone and looked around the room at various expressions. He frowned.
“What did I miss?”
TEN
Instead of answering him, Hollis asked, “Is the elevator all taken care of?”
She did that fairly often, Emma thought, watching the attractive fed with her easy smile and unreadable blue eyes. An unusual blue, she thought. Almost turquoise. Like so much about this woman, her eyes were just slightly unusual. No question she knew her job, that was clear, but Emma was curious about what else Hollis Templeton’s invariably calm manner and pleasant expression hid.
Emma wondered what her chances were of getting her questions asked, much less answered, and had a hunch they weren’t good. With an effort, she hauled her mind back to what the sheriff was saying.
“. . . he’ll build a plywood barrier and fasten it securely across that opening. Other than that, I can’t do much except keep a deputy or a security guard stationed at that elevator twenty-four-seven until the elevator company gets off its ass and replaces the doors and car.”
Thinking of the field they had just left, Emma murmured, “You might want to get one of our guys who’s good with a pressure washer to hose it down in there as well, Mal. Before you close it off, I mean.”
“Shit. I should have thought of that. Now that the doc and the agents here have had a look, we might as well do what we can to get these places back to normal. Emma, could you please go ask for a volunteer or two familiar with a pressure washer? I’d really rather not make it an order.”
“Copy that.” She left the conference room.
The sheriff looked back at Hollis. “That mark around Perla Cross’s body? The doc really doesn’t know what could have caused it?”
“Pretty sure a cord or cable caused it,” Hollis replied. “Maybe a rope. We’re just not sure how or why. It certainly wasn’t a case of her cinching her belt too tight. Plus, she wasn’t wearing one.” She turned her head and looked at Cullen, frowning just a bit. “Jill was planning to head out to the Cross home and search the attic sometime today. Do you know if she has yet?”
“She said she’d come by here to drop off the autopsy report on Perla Cross before heading out there. She knows I’m planning to go with her.”
“That mark on Mrs. Cross’s body, Cullen. We need to know as much as we can about it. And if there is a cord or cable, we need to find it.”
“I’ll see if there’s anything to find,” he replied calmly. “Between us, the doc, her assistant, and I may come up with something useful.”
Once again, Mal had the odd sense that a silent conversation had gone on, or something had been said in a code he didn’t understand. And he still found it at least briefly unsettling. Then his attention was reclaimed by the actual conversation going on.
Cullen was saying, “We have five victims so far, and the one thing they all have in common is that text message. They all got that at exactly three o’clock in the afternoon, and died later that night. The text originating from an unknown number, presumably a disposable cell.”
Kirby, clearly trying to get her mind off recent unsettling sights, added, “And the cell company’s records for Clarity put those calls being placed from somewhere between the two closest cell towers—meaning in the general area of downtown.”
br /> “I don’t think that’s going to be much help,” Hollis said.
“No, me either. Between businesses and condos and that big apartment complex, most of the citizens of Clarity both live and work in the downtown area or just outside it, the area covered by those towers.”
DeMarco spoke up suddenly. “The victim photos up on the board. Anybody else see a pattern?”
The photos fastened to the board above the timeline were of the victims as they had been in life rather than death: smiling, happy for whatever that moment had been.
Clara Adams had been twenty-eight when her car had inexplicably crashed and burned in mid-July. A very pretty blonde with an unusually warm smile. An elementary school teacher.
Jeremy Summers had been thirty and hosting a neighborhood barbecue, manning the grill reportedly complete with a comical apron inviting people to Kiss the Cook. A plain charcoal grill, large but seemingly no threat at all until it had inexplicably exploded, not only killing the friendly, happily married father of a little girl, but almost literally blowing him into burning chunks of flesh. In the photo taken for his successful insurance agency, he looked like anybody’s neighbor. Everybody’s neighbor.
Karen Underwood, the last of July’s victims, only twenty-six and killed so near her wedding and almost literally under the horrified eyes of friends, family, and the fiancé she had adored since childhood, the victim of an inexplicably malfunctioning elevator. In her photo, she was a beautiful blonde, glowing with happiness.
Brady Nash had been sixty and looked every year of it in his photo, his broad face lined and leathery after decades spent outdoors working on his farm. But he was smiling, and there was a twinkle in his eyes that said he always had stories and jokes to tell, and told them well. Found not only dead but literally shredded only two days before, the murder weapon a combine harvester, and the murder itself inexplicable in almost every way.
And, finally, Perla Ferguson Cross, who looked even younger than twenty-three in her photo, her fiery red hair and slightly narrowed blue eyes more than hinting of spirit and temper. Another truly beautiful woman who had suffered the most bizarre and inexplicable murder of all, and only last night.