“She wants it to go away. Under normal circumstances, she’d be happy to be seen as a prosecutor of religious hate crimes, defender of the God-fearing, et cetera. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Not only is the logic of the thing nutty, Stryker’s staff is already buried under an avalanche of heroin-fentanyl deaths, some of which appear to be opportunistic murders. Her caseload is twice what it was last year, and that’s double what it was the year before.”
“So what does she want from you?”
“She’s desperate for us to find Tate, announce a motive for the killings that has nothing to do with religion, make sure no more figure eights appear on local churches—and get it all done before Gant can whip this mess up into a political hurricane.”
“Is that all?”
Morgan sighed. “I know, I know. But I can understand the pressure she’s under. Add a religious angle to a murder case, and everybody goes crazy—especially the media. All of a sudden, it’s not just one more homicide in a nation that has fifteen thousand every year, plus seventy thousand drug deaths and half a million tobacco deaths. It’s anti-religious terrorism! Raise an army of the righteous! Beat back the Devil! Send money to Silas Gant!”
He fell silent. The agitation in his eyes had shifted to something that looked like hatred.
A moment later, he blinked as if to erase a dangerous thought, turned to his desk, picked up two sheets of paper, and announced with a sudden change of tone, “We have copies of the texts sent from Billy Tate’s phone—one to Selena Cursen, one to Chandler Aspern. Which do you want to see first?”
“The one he sent first.”
“That’d be the one to Cursen,” said Morgan, coming over to the couch and handing it to him. “The originals from the carrier identify Tate and Cursen only by their cell numbers. We substituted their names for sake of clarity.”
Gurney read the text exchange.
Tate: lena, u there?
Cursen: ANGEL???
Tate: where am I?
Cursen: ANGEL?????????
Tate: i was on the roof, what happened?
Cursen: OMG OMG OMG
Tate: what happened?
Cursen: LIGHTNING!!!
Tate: what lightning?
Cursen: RAVEN SAID YOU DIED
Tate: died where?
Cursen: THE CHURCH WHERE THE LIGHTNING STRUCK
Tate: where did they take me?
Cursen: RAVEN SAID PEELS
Tate: peales funerals?
Cursen: ILL COME GET YOU!!! NOW???
Tate: no not now, have to think, this is big very very very big
Cursen: WHEN DO I SEE YOU???
Tate: soon, don’t tell, nobody at all
Cursen: NOT EVEN RAVEN???
Tate: not yet when i see you we can decide who to tell but nobody now
Cursen: MY ANGEL
Tate: I’m the dark angel who rose from the dead—our secret, right lena?
Cursen: OUR SECRET MY ANGEL COME HOME SOON
Gurney read it a second time, then a third.
Morgan was watching him closely. “Any reaction?”
“Who’s Raven?”
“She’s like a younger version of Cursen. Lives at her house. A follower or apprentice. Maybe part of a threesome with Cursen and Tate.”
“She was in the village square when Tate fell off the roof?”
“Apparently. I didn’t see her, but that doesn’t mean anything. Things were pretty crazy. She probably came to watch him spray that garbage on the steeple.”
“Okay, let me see the text to Aspern.”
This one was terser, but more intriguing. It was a single message with no reply.
Tate: dead man has a plan
mega score 4 u
easy peasy
c u 2nite
dont shoot
haha
B.
Gurney also read this message three times. At first, he had an urge to confront Aspern with it, since the man had just denied ever receiving any messages from Tate. Then he thought of a possible innocent explanation. Aspern could have assumed the oddball message had been sent to the wrong number and ignored it. And perhaps it was, in fact, sent to the wrong number. In any event, there was no solid basis for assuming he’d lied.
Gurney shared these thoughts with Morgan and added, “The text’s intended recipient might be in doubt, but its content points to the existence of an accomplice. Or at least an intended accomplice.”
Morgan nodded. “Someone Tate knew well enough to sign the text with just his initial.”
“Someone,” said Gurney, “who has a phone number similar to Aspern’s, assuming that Tate made a one- or two-digit mistake typing it in.”
As Morgan was considering this, his phone rang. He peered down at the screen. “It’s Gareth Montell, the department’s forensic attorney. He’s meeting with Hilda Russell to go through her brother’s estate documents. I should talk to him.”
“Fine. I want to get back to Aspern and see what he has to say, then talk to Cursen. Can I take these copies of the texts?”
Morgan nodded and took the call from Montell.
Gurney headed next door to the village hall. As he was climbing the porch steps, he encountered Aspern on his way out.
A flash of irritation on the man’s face was replaced by a cool smile.
“Something else, Detective?”
“A question. We’ve managed to retrieve some of Billy Tate’s text messages. This one was sent to your cell number.” He handed the copy to Aspern. “Do you have any recollection of receiving it?”
Aspern studied it, his nose wrinkling as if the message had an unpleasant odor.
“I remember seeing this,” he said after a long moment, handing it back to Gurney. “But I had no idea it came from Tate. I assumed it was sent to me by mistake.”
“Did you call the source number to ask about it?”
“Are you joking? I wouldn’t waste my time on anything like that.”
Aspern made a show of glancing at his Rolex. “I hope that’s helpful.” He flashed an empty smile and hurried past Gurney down the porch steps. He got in the passenger seat of a waiting Mercedes, which immediately pulled away.
Selena Cursen’s house was located in the opposite direction from Waterview Drive, well outside the village of Larchfield—in the center of what Gurney had been told was a state-designated wilderness area where human habitation was restricted to the few widely scattered homes there at the time of the designation.
Wilderness was a good word for it, Gurney agreed as the gravel road took him through a pine forest thick enough to block out all but a few glimpses of the sky. As his GPS led him ever deeper into this dark place, he found himself with an uncomfortable sense of isolation.
He wondered how much of his uneasiness was coming from the echoes in his mind of witchcraft and Satanism and the message written in blood on the walls of the two female victims.
His GPS directed him from the gravel road onto a rougher dirt road, which terminated after another mile at a tall black-iron fence—with an opening too narrow for a car to pass through.
Each upright bar of the fence was topped with a black spearpoint shaped like an ace of spades. Beyond the opening, a stone footpath passed through an expanse of untended grass to a gray three-story Gothic Victorian.
Gurney switched off his engine and watched a flock of crows rising from the grass and settling in the tops of the pines. He took out his copy of Tate’s text to Cursen and read it one more time, searching for inspiration on the best way to approach her.
As he was pondering this, he sensed some motion in front of him. A pale woman in a silky black robe appeared in the fence opening. She had straight black hair, violet eyes, black lipstick, and three silver studs in her lower lip. A polished black cameo of the horned god of witchcraft hung from a silver chain around her neck. Her fingernails were glossy black. Her feet were bare and as pale as her face. The fabric of her robe lay against the contours of her body in a way that suggested it might be all she was wearing.