Morgan fast-forwarded the video to a later point where a man in chinos and a loose cardigan entered the area with a small leather bag. He squatted by the body and applied a stethoscope to the chest and carotid artery. Because of the position of the camera it was difficult for Gurney to be sure, but the man seemed to be palpating the neck area, then checking the eyes. After a while, he stood up and spoke to Slovak and Morgan and a third officer, all of whom had been closely observing the examination.
Morgan stopped the video and turned to Gurney. “The guy you just saw examining Tate is Dr. Fallow.”
After another fast-forwarding, the video showed a rolling stretcher being guided toward the body. Gurney recognized the man pushing it as Peale. There was some discussion between him and the doctor, after which Peale, Morgan, Slovak, and one of the uniformed officers lifted the body onto the stretcher. With Peale leading the way, Morgan rolled the stretcher out of the frame.
At that point he stopped the video again.
“Any questions?”
“From the point at which the video begins, until the body is removed, how much time elapses?” asked Gurney. “With the fast-forwarding, I couldn’t tell.”
“There’s an embedded time code, which I disabled for this viewing, since it’s a bit of a distraction. The total time from start to finish is a little less than an hour. The first twenty minutes or so is devoted to Tate on the roof. What I showed you starts at the end of that portion. The full version includes the defibrillation efforts, the arrival of the EMTs in an ambulance, along with two police cars from Bastenburg.”
“How did Tate get up on the roof?”
“There’s an interior ladder that goes up into the steeple, and a door in the back of the steeple that opens onto the roof.”
Gurney turned to Slovak. “Is graffiti the reason Tate was up there?”
“Reason doesn’t mean much when you’re talking about Billy Tate.”
“Tate hated Angus, and the pastor of St. Giles is Angus’s sister,” said Morgan. “So, it could have been a way of lashing out at him.”
Barstow was frowning. “There’s something I’d like to see again. Could you take the video back to the point just before the final lightning bolt?”
Morgan did as she asked.
“There!” she said, peering intently at the screen. “On the side of the steeple, about waist-high where Tate is standing. Can you enlarge that area?”
Morgan went through a series of taps and swipes on his phone, and that portion of the scene expanded to fill the frame.
“It’s not very clear,” said Barstow, “because of the angle of the camera and the limited lighting from the streetlamp, but you can make out the graffiti. See the curving, intersecting lines?”
They all leaned forward, studying the area she was pointing at.
“Now look at this,” she said, holding up her own phone.
On the screen was the photo she’d taken in the embalming room of the figure scratched into the wall paint—a horizontal number eight with a rough line bisecting it.
The murky graffiti on the steeple had the same shape.
Morgan’s worry lines deepened. “Any idea what that thing is supposed to be?”
“While you guys were up in Peale’s office, I checked the internet to see if I could find anything like the figure on the wall,” said Barstow. “It might be just a coincidence, but it resembles the ancient alchemy symbol for sulfur.”
“Sulfur?” Slovak uttered a dismissive grunt. “What’s sulfur got to do with anything?”
“Maybe nothing,” said Barstow. “Except that the site where I found it said that sulfur was once believed to be the main ingredient in hellfire. Because of that connection, some people who called themselves Satanists adopted the symbol as their emblem.”
Her explanation produced a fraught silence.
“Am I missing something here?” asked Gurney.
Morgan shifted uneasily in his chair. “Billy Tate’s girlfriend, a woman by the name of Selena Cursen, is supposedly involved in witchcraft—whatever that means.”
“The Rich Witch,” said Barstow.
Gurney stared at her. “The what?”
“The Rich Witch. Her parents set her up with a fat trust fund, probably because they knew she was unemployable. Dabbles in all sorts of occult nonsense. Big spooky house in the woods. Soulmate of Billy Tate, ever since he got out of prison. Dresses in black. Silver studs in her lips. Very intense gaze—like she’s imagining a plan she has for you. Makes a lot of people uncomfortable.”
“She’s a loner?” asked Gurney. “Or is there a local group she’s part of?”
“I’ve never heard of any group,” said Barstow. “You, Chief?”
Morgan shook his head. “Far as I know, the only creepy group around here consisted of her and Tate.” He paused for moment, then spoke to Slovak. “Brad, you need to pay Selena Cursen a visit. The symbol scratched on Peale’s wall is enough to make her a person of interest in the theft of the body. But go easy. Offer your condolences. Tell her you’re just following up on the accident. Try to get a sense of how she reacts to questions about Tate. Don’t say anything that might trigger her to clam up or call a lawyer.”
Slovak looked less than happy. He rotated his shoulders like a weightlifter working out a cramp. “If that figure eight thing suggests she’s involved, how about we get a search warrant for her house, go in there and tear it apart?”
Morgan shook his head. “The figure eight may not mean what we think it does. Too loose a connection for a judge to issue a warrant. We need more.”
“I have a question,” said Gurney. “The video of the accident shows you and Brad helping to lift Tate onto the stretcher. Did you get a clear view of his face?”
Morgan nodded. “Perfectly clear.”
“So, you have no doubt that the person who fell off that roof was, in fact, Billy Tate?”
“No doubt at all. You, Brad?”
Slovak shook his head emphatically. “Zero doubt.”
“Even with the lightning damage to his face?” asked Gurney.
“The damage was awful,” explained Morgan, “but only to the left side. The right side was untouched. No one at the scene had any doubt about his identity. It’s one of the few things about the case I am sure of.” He gave Gurney a questioning look. “You seem puzzled.”
“I’m trying to understand the connection between the theft of Tate’s body and the murder of Angus Russell. I don’t see the purpose of putting a dead man’s fingerprints on the murder weapon. Stealing the body involved a major risk, but I don’t see a payoff that would justify it. If Tate was dead before Russell was killed, we’re obviously not going to believe he was the perp. So what was the point of leaving that phony evidence in Russell’s house?”
“Maybe the killer has a really twisted sense of humor,” suggested Slovak.
Gurney shook his head. “If it was just the killer’s macabre idea of a joke, the trouble he took to pull it off seems way out of proportion. And as a form of misdirection, it makes no sense. It makes me wonder what I’m missing.”
Morgan flashed a rare smile. “That gives me hope. Back in the city, every time you zeroed in on an odd fact in a case, it led to the solution.”
“Speaking of oddities,” said Gurney, “that meeting Peale described with Darlene Tate was hardly normal. Did something happen between her and her stepson that explains it?”
Slovak spoke first. “Billy Tate and I were in high school at the same time, a year apart. There was a rumor circulating about him and his stepmother. Pretty X-rated stuff.”
“They were having sex?”
“It was just a rumor at first, but when his father shot him, that seemed to seal the deal.”