“Of course, of course.” The priest smiled and arced an arm at the church behind him. The flapping vestment made me think of a giant green bird. “But at the Lord’s house? On the Lord’s day?”
“And you are?” Ramsey was still grinning, but far less warmly.
“Father Granger Hoke. Father G to my followers.”
“Mr. and Mrs. Teague know the reason we’re here.”
“May I ask what that is?” Again flashing yards of priestly dentition.
Ramsey stared at John, who stared right back.
Up close, I could see that Teague was rat-faced, with an undersize jaw and florid complexion. His wife was bland and colorless, the type you’d pass on the street and later be unable to describe. Though she kept her eyes down, a twitch in one lower lid danced feathery shadows across her cheek.
Hoke’s smile swung between Ramsey and the couple at his side, holding, but losing ground.
“First that meddling old hag, now you. This is harassment.” John’s voice was deep and gravelly. The one I’d heard on the audio? I lowered my breathing, anxious to catch every nuance.
“Hag?” Ramsey asked.
“The clown-haired one. The woman needs a good—”
“Hazel Strike?” The question was out before I could stop myself. “When did you last talk with her?”
Teague looked my way, but offered no reply.
“When girls go missing we take the situation seriously.” Ramsey, getting back on point.
Hoke’s lips tightened and his brows rose slightly. Surprised? Wary? His hands dropped into an inverted V in front of his genitals.
“No one’s missing,” Teague growled.
“You’ve heard from Cora?”
A beat, then, “Proverbs thirty, seventeen.” Teague’s pitch was low and threatening. “The eye of one who mocks his father and who despises the childbearing of his mother, let the ravens of the torrent tear it out, and let the sons of the eagles consume it.”
“Now, John, we mustn’t forget.” Hoke placed a fatherly hand on John’s shoulder. “The sweet Lord Jesus also preaches forgiveness.”
“Everything all right, Father?”
Hoke and Teague turned. Ramsey and I looked past them.
A man had appeared in the open doorway. Maybe thirty, very tall, with broad shoulders sloping from a powerful neck, and the same flushed skin and rodent features as Teague.
“Owen Lee, please join us.” Again, the smile and flapping brocade.
Owen Lee stepped forward onto the stoop. Stopped. Crossed his arms and regarded us, expressionless.
“Owen Lee is John and Fatima’s eldest,” Hoke explained. “And a very valuable member of our parish. Every day, I thank God for Owen Lee’s support.”
Ramsey nodded to the younger, refocused on the elder.
“Cora?” The deputy’s tone was now pure steel.
“Hebrews thirteen, four.” Teague’s eyes, hard on Ramsey’s, burned with the fervor of a zealot. Perhaps with hatred. “Whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.”
Fatima flinched, as though shocked with live current. Owen Lee stood stoic. The guy looked vaguely familiar. In the way a beef carcass looks vaguely familiar. Something about his build. Pete? Harry’s second husband, the guy we called the Hulk?
“Where is your daughter, sir?”
“Run off to serve the flesh. To fornicate with a man who bears the devil’s—”
“And who would that be?”
Teague slid a glance to Hoke, who nodded encouragement.
“Mason Gulley.” Spit, as though the name were a bitter taste in his mouth.
“Mason is another of our parishioners,” Hoke offered. “Or was, until recently.”
“How recently?”
The priest gave a nervous clip of a laugh. “Dear me, Deputy. I’d have to check my—”
“Estimate.”
After considering, Hoke said, “Mason helped with our renovation project. Not all of it, but toward the end. We painted, upgraded the family center, replaced the old steps. It was a parishwide effort, every hour of labor and every ounce of material donated gratis.” Nodding toward Teague. “John’s generosity made the new parking area possible. It was such an outpouring of God’s—”
“Then he stopped attending?”
“I believe so.”
“When was that?”
“2011. As I recall, the project finished up around the time school started.”
Ramsey to Teague. “What makes you think Cora left with Mason Gulley?”
Teague only glared. Behind him, his son watched and listened.
Ramsey’s eyes moved to the priest.
Hoke’s fingers tightened on the burly shoulder inside the ratty black suit. Again, he nodded reassurance.
Teague’s Adam’s apple rose and fell. When he answered, the feral edge to his voice sent ice up my spine.
“Because the Lord Jesus whispered to me that Satan himself come down from the mountain to claim their whoring souls.”
Most autopsies follow a standard routine. After an external exam, the legendary Y incision is made. The organs are removed, weighed, and inspected. Key vessels and nerves are observed.
With the gut cavity emptied, a U-shaped cut is made across the crown of the head, from ear to ear. The scalp is pulled down over the face in front and the neck in back. The scalp’s tough underside is searched for blood or bruising, the skull’s outer surface for nicks or fractures.
Then a handheld surgical saw is revved up. A removable cap is created, asymmetrical to avoid slippage when the skull is reassembled and the scalp stitched back together.
The cap is detached with a tug and a slurping suck, revealing the dura mater, a thick membrane encasing the brain. The dura mater is checked for epidural hematoma—pooled blood that may have pressed on the brain and resulted in death. And for subdural hematoma on the flip side.
Though “gray matter” gets all the press, the brain’s outer surface is actually white and laced with the gauzy arachnoid and pia maters. At this point the brain’s fine webs and fissures are observed for evidence of subarachnoid hemorrhage, intracranial bleeding triggered by the brain banging around inside the skull, shearing delicate vessels on its surface.
Next, fingers are inserted under the open brow, the frontal lobes are hooked and lifted, and the nerves and vessels leading to the face are snipped. The tentorium cerebelli, the shelf of dura mater that protects the cerebellum and brain stem, the “reptile brain,” is severed. Using a scalpel long enough to reach the base of the skull, the spinal cord is cut, and the brain is slipped free. The cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata now lie in the pathologist’s hand. Or in the skullcap, maybe a stainless-steel bowl used like a catcher’s mitt.
The brain is placed in a formaldehyde solution, where, over the next two weeks, its consistency changes from Jell-O to cheese. After every inch of its complex surface is observed, it is cut with a long fillet knife, much like sausage. Slice by slice, its internal structure is studied.
But none of that would happen with the remains discovered off the Devil’s Tail trail.
Since refrigeration was unnecessary, the bones, bucket fragments, and concrete had spent the weekend locked in the Avery County property room. Ramsey had promised delivery early Monday morning. He’d also promised to look into Mason Gulley.
After leaving the Holiness church, Ramsey had dropped me at my car. Provisioned with unwanted sandwiches, cookies, and apples from Aunt Ruby, I’d made a surgical strike at Heatherhill Farm, then headed home.
At the annex I’d booked a flight to Montreal, then gone straight to bed, not glancing at the accusing paper muddle on the dining room table. In the morning, I’d again shot past it to the kitchen, then straight out the door.
For the hundredth time, I glanced at the clock. Ten-seventeen. Impatient, I phoned Ramsey. He said he was at the CMPD forensics lab, dropping off the bucket. Estimated he’d be at the MCME in half an hour.