“On it.”
Nan was glued to her laptop. “I don’t know if this is anything, but I’m following up on Sergeant Chirico’s body count.”
“Murders in other jurisdictions?” I asked.
“Yes. Pastors, priests, ministers. There are more of these than you’d think.”
“What have you got in the last six months, maybe a year?”
“Tennessee. A minister shot to death by his wife in the parsonage.”
“Not ours.”
“A nun strangled and raped in Baltimore.”
“Solved?” Mike asked.
“No, but appears to be in the course of a burglary.”
“Well, say a prayer for her, everybody. Doesn’t sound like our boy.”
“Here’s a love triangle in Texas,” Nan said. “A pastor hired his own son to kill his wife — the killer’s stepmother. The son’s still on the loose.”
“Cause of death?” Mike asked. He was restless and itching to break through to a solution.
“She was drugged. Then suffocated with a pillow, to look like an accidental overdose.”
“I’ll take the drugging part of it. Our vics must have been drugged to be moved to the killing ground. But accidental isn’t his style.”
“Okay. This next one had me at the headline, but wrong gender. Skip it.”
“Read,” Mike said.
“ ‘ Community Grieves Slain Pastor.’ It goes on to say that he was found inside the large church building — a converted warehouse — his throat slit—”
All of us stopped at those three words and gave our complete attention to Nan. She was cherry-picking phrases from the story. “No known motive. No suspects. Parishioners being questioned.”
“What kind of church?” Mike was running fingers through his hair and barking questions.
“Pentecostal. Happened last November.”
“Any ’scrip of the kind of Pentecostal? Anything about extreme?”
“I’m reading as fast as I can, Mike. I don’t see anything like that.”
“Where’d this go down?”
“The town is called Alpharetta.”
“It’s right outside of Atlanta,” I said.
“Details?”
Nan was pulling the follow-up story. “Beloved pastor. Eleven years at the church,” she said, taking a breath. “Whoops. Some think the killing may be connected to the fact that he just came out to his congregation a month ago. He’s gay. Wanted them to accept it, to welcome his longtime partner. Wanted to continue to serve. Split the community, to put it mildly.”
“There’s your outcast,” I said. “There’s your pariah.”
“Does it say anything about how he was dressed?” Mike asked.
“Fully clothed. Except for his collar.”
Maybe the killer wanted a trophy from his victim, a collar of his own. Maybe he wore it to the courthouse to watch Bishop Deegan testify. Maybe he used it to approach his trusting victims, knowing the simple clerical vestment would disarm them.
“One of the worshippers speculates the killer must have wanted the poor man defrocked.”
“Silenced,” Mike said. “Defrocked and silenced. That’s his signature, all right.”
THIRTY-FIVE
I studied the photograph taken at the Chelsea Square Workshop after a performance of Ursula Hewitt’s controversial play.
“The newspaper doesn’t have a credit for that, Alex. One of Hewitt’s friends e-mailed it to her, and she forwarded the downloaded image to the editor herself,” Max said.
“Thanks.” I covered my ears with my hands to think, while Mike tried to light a fire under a small sheriff’s office in Georgia to get police and autopsy reports, and someone who knew the case to talk us through it.
I scribbled a note to Faith Grant on the bottom of the page with the photograph. I had put her e-mail address in my BlackBerry earlier, so I wrote a note above the picture, and asked her to call me as soon as she received it.
“Hey, Max. Would you please scan this for me and get it out?”
“Sure.”
She was back in three minutes and placed the paper in front of me. While I waited for my phone to ring, I kept staring at the four women. There was Ursula Hewitt, basking in the congratulations of her acquaintances. Opposite was Naomi Gersh, who appeared to be engaged in conversation with the others. The photo was so blurred — maybe even taken by a cell phone, from a distance, that it was hard to make out the faces clearly.
Four smart, vibrant women celebrating together in December at a controversial play that would obviously have been offensive to many devout worshippers — and now two of them were dead, victims of torture and mutilation.
“This is Alex Cooper,” I said, answering my cell.
“Hi, Alex. It’s Faith.”
“Thanks for the call. Is everything calm on your end?”
“Just fine, thanks. How can I help?”
“This photograph I forwarded you was taken at the workshop after one of the performances of Double-Crossed. I’m thinking that whoever took it might have more shots from that evening.”
“That’s probably true.”
“One of the detectives visited the theater this morning. It’s quite small, and since there was a party of some sort, there’s a chance some other audience members could have been captured in the images.”
Faith Grant took a moment to follow my thinking. “Why, Alex? Do you think the killer was among the guests?”
“We don’t know. I’m not hiding anything from you, Faith. We’re just trying to run it all down. The newspaper editor tells us one of Ursula’s friends supplied the photo. You said you knew women who were there. Maybe it was the night Chat went to see it. That would help us to start tracking back for information.”
I wanted information from these two other women in the photograph. I also wanted to make sure they were not also in the sights of our killer, that they were not currently in danger of being silenced.
“I see.”
“Of course you recognize Ursula.”
“Yes.”
“And the dark-haired woman on the far left is Naomi Gersh.”
“Okay.”
“The caption says one of the others is an ordained minister. By any chance—”
“Yes. I know who that is shaking hands with Ursula. Jeanine Portland, a graduate of this seminary. She’s wonderful, and I’m sure she’ll be helpful to you. I believe she’s at a church in New England.”
“Can you get that contact information for us?”
“Of course. The front office will have it.”
“So that leaves the young woman next to Naomi.”
“I can help you there, too, but she’s no nun. I’ll swear to that on a Bible.” Faith Grant was laughing. “That’s my sister, Chastity.”
I held the paper right in front of me and examined the picture again. “It doesn’t look anything like her.”
“That was her goth period, Alex. Dyed her hair black and straightened it. Lucky for me it was her New Year’s resolution to lose that look.”
My heart raced. I didn’t want her to hear any concern in my voice. “I need to talk to her, Faith. I need to talk to her as soon as I can.”
“I’ll tell her that when she returns my call. I’ve left her a message explaining that I’d like her to spend the weekend here with me in the dorms.”
“And she hasn’t called back?”
“Don’t sound so alarmed about it, Alex. It’s only been a couple of hours. I told you that Chat’s a free spirit.”
“So you haven’t talked to her since she left the seminary this morning?”
“No. It’s just been a few hours, Alex. There’s nothing worrisome about that.”
“Do you know where she is or what she’s doing that was so important she couldn’t stay to talk about Ursula?”
“I don’t keep her on a leash, Alex. And she isn’t responsible for what happened to Ursula, even if I am.”