Beckett crumpled the paper; tossed it into a can. “What else?”
“A call came into the tip line twenty minutes ago. No name. He asked for you specifically.”
Beckett processed that. The only active tip line he knew about had been set up for the Ramona Morgan case. The number was in the papers, on local TV. “What’d he say?”
She made air quotes as she spoke. “‘Tell Detective Beckett there was movement at the church.’”
“That’s it? Movement?”
“It was strange.”
“Any ID on the phone?”
“Disposable cell. The voice was muffled, definitely male. He said one other thing, but it was even stranger.”
Beckett looked the question.
She flinched a little. “Sorry. The connection broke so I missed part of it, but I think he said, ‘Not even the house of God requires five walls.’”
Five walls. Beckett didn’t like the sound of that. Four walls to hold up the roof. What was the fifth?
Adrian Wall?
Beckett decided to take a drive, after all. He rolled down the windows to wash out the heat, then worked his way through downtown and past the sprawl. Tip lines had been known to cause more trouble than they were worth, especially in high-profile, violent cases. Nut jobs came out of the woodwork when the press got hot. False reports. Copycats. General hysteria. He’d been around long enough to see it all, but something about the tone of this one bothered him.
Not even the house of God requires five walls.
Beckett drove until he saw the church on a distant hill. When he crested the ridge, he circled the east side and parked where he’d parked before. Light slanted through the trees. A hot wind blew.
“Shit.”
The tape was down. The door stood open.
He got out of the car, and his hand settled on the butt of his weapon as he studied blank windows and blind corners, the dark trunks of massive trees. There had been movement at the church. No kind of doubt. He took the stairs, the sun hot on his shoulders. He met the same dark inside, the same smell. He pushed through the narthex, into the nave; and for an instant it was as if no time had passed, either.
“Jesus Christ.”
Beckett crossed himself from old habit and pushed deeper into the nave, thinking, Wrong, wrong, this is so fucking wrong.
The woman was dead on the altar and hadn’t been that way for long. No flies or discoloration; the hair still shone. Even then, he caught the first hint of a sour smell. It was oily and familiar, a death smell; but that’s not what made Beckett’s stomach turn. He tried to lift one of the victim’s arms; found her in full rigor with no sign of dissipation. Three hours at least. No more than fifteen. He lifted the linen to confirm she was nude beneath, took a final look at her face, then pushed outside to find fresh air. The stairs were worn smooth, yet he almost fell going down. From the bottom, it was a twenty-yard stumble, the Johnson grass and dog fennel as high as his waist, the day already different from what it had been. Beckett drew in a breath that burned, then bent as if he might vomit. He closed his eyes, but the world kept spinning. It wasn’t the church that made him sick. It wasn’t the red eyes or crushed neck, or even its being the third woman dead on the same damn altar.
Beckett knew the girl.
He knew her really well.
Forty minutes later, he had the same team back at the church: techs, medical examiner, even Dyer.
“What do we think about this?” Dyer had already asked the same question a dozen times. “Why the church? Why this church?”
Beckett had been there a dozen times, too, as if repeating the same thing over and over might offer some magical revelation. He shrugged. “It was Adrian’s church.”
“It was mine, too. Same with five hundred other people. Hell, I saw you here once or twice.”
“I don’t have snakes in my head. I’m thinking Adrian does.”
Dyer didn’t respond. He circled the body as if unsure what to do. Even now, he had the team on hold outside. He wanted Beckett, alone in the church. The two of them. The body.
“This could start a panic,” Dyer said. “You realize that.”
“Maybe.”
“There’s no maybe. The town is already on edge. Any chance we can keep this quiet?”
Beckett thought of all the people outside. Fifteen? Maybe more? “I don’t see how.”
“So we make no mistakes. We go by the book.”
“’Course.”
“You say you knew her?”
“Lauren Lester. She worked day care at St. John’s, lived on a side street in Milton Heights. She used to watch my kids. My youngest still talks about her.”
“Are you too close to this, Charlie?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“Tell me again about the caller. ‘Five walls’? He had to mean Adrian.”
Beckett shrugged. “Or wants us to think he did.”
“It’s the closest thing we have to an ID.”
“‘Five walls. House of God.’ It’s not an ID, Francis. It’s crazy talk.”
“Whoever called knew there was a body.”
“Or put it there.”
“I want Adrian in for questioning.”
“Amen to that.”
“Tell me what you need.”
“Everything, Francis.” Beckett dropped a hand on Dyer’s shoulder and squeezed. “I want everything.”
Beckett got the cadaver dog an hour before sunset. It came in the back of a marked cruiser, a black Lab named Solo on loan from the SBI office in Charlotte. “Hey, Charlie. Sorry about the holdup.” The handler was a young woman named Ginny. Early thirties. Athletic. She opened the back door and let the dog out. “You know that helicopter crash up in Avery County?”
“The tourist thing?”
“We’re still pulling bits and pieces off the mountainside.”
“Jeez…”
“Yeah, I know. Quite the production you have here.”
Beckett examined the scene with fresh eyes. Nineteen cars. Two dozen people. The body was gone, but crime-scene techs were scouring the church even as uniformed officers combed the grounds.
“Where’s Captain Dyer?”
“I don’t know,” Beckett said. “Some kind of PR push, probably. You understand what’s happening here?”
“Just that you found another body.”
“I want to make sure it’s the only one. Dog’s not too tired, is he? The crash and all?”
“You kidding? Look at him.”
Beckett did. The animal was bright-eyed and eager.
Ginny seemed eager, too. “Just tell me when.”
Beckett studied the sky, the line of dark trees. The sun would be down soon. The dog whined. “Do it,” he said.
Ginny slipped the leash.
He watched it happen from the same knoll across the valley. The dog. The way it moved.
Please, God…
He pushed the binoculars against his eyes. This part was not supposed to happen. The body on the altar, yes. But not his special place.
Not the others.
The dog moved up one side of the church, and back down the other. It stopped, backtracked, continued. The handler tracked it, light and quick herself. The dog’s agitation was unmistakable.
The church.
It was all the animal cared about. Back and forth, head down.
No, no, no…
He broke cover; couldn’t help it. Beckett was involved, now. He was unmistakable. The size. The shaggy head. His arm went up, and uniformed officers jogged for the church. Where was the dog?