CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
Ella mounted the curb outside what she hoped was the home of Joseph Carpenter, Chesapeake’s resident collector of religious artifacts, according to her former prime suspect. She slammed the brakes on and surveyed the street. Beside her, Luca double-checked his weapon.
St. Michaels Church sat on the opposite side of the road. Twenty or so people were standing outside the locked gates, all wrapped up in their scarves and raincoats and woolly hats. Ella was quick to remember that for the past few years, only murder had brought her to churches. Not worship. Not even Christmas carols.
Luca asked, ‘What are those punters waiting for?’
‘No idea, but the chances of us doing this discreetly are slim to none.’
Two cruisers pulled up behind them and drew every eyeball in the street. Pain shot through Ella's leg as she wrestled herself out of the driver's seat, but pain was just the body's way of keeping score, and right now she had bigger problems than her personal damage report. Four officers extracted themselves from their vehicles, Reeves included.
‘Reeves, can you see what’s going on with those punters? I don’t want them near the scene if it’s what we think.’
‘On it.’ Reeves clicked his fingers and sent his uniforms to the task.
‘Guys, keep an eye out for anyone… suspicious. Our guy might be amongst them,’ Ella added.
The uniforms crossed the street and left Ella, Luca and Reeves alone. Ella surveyed the mansion while Luca did his own threat assessment beside her. The place was a middle finger to architectural restraint - three stories of Victorian excess jabbing at a sky that was fast turning black. Copper gutters caught the first gasps of moonlight, and topiary crosses lined a gravel path that was clearly maintained daily.
Ella said, ‘Come on. Let’s get inside.’
She led the way down the path and found a front door straight out of a supermax prison. Ella pressed a hand to it and felt mahogany veneer wrapped around a steel core.
‘Someone’s compensating for something,’ Luca said.
The door moved slightly in its frame as she pushed, which told her it wasn’t bolted to the nines. Good news.
‘It’s just for show,’ she said. ‘It’s just a single lock holding this thing. Stand back.’
She stepped back and squared up, ready to introduce her boot to the thing. Before she could strike, one of the uniforms rushed over, breathless.
'The people outside that church are waiting for Carpenter. He's the priest. Apparently, he opens up at 5 PM every weekday.'
‘So he’s half an hour late,’ Reeves said.
The worst-case scenario rushed into Ella's head, but she pushed it to one side. Get the facts first, then fill in the blanks later.
‘We’ve got cause to get inside then. Let’s go.’
Ella rushed forward and planted her boot against the lock. Pain jolted up her leg from her burns, but the door remained stubbornly attached to its holdings. She winced as lightning engulfed her nerve endings. A heavy slab of steel like this should have torn the lock off the frame without issue.
‘My turn,’ Luca said.
Ella had barely moved out of the way before Luca’s boot found the same spot. Another one followed, then the sound of splintering wood. On the other side, metal clanged to the floor. Luca shouldered the door open.
‘Go,’ he said.
Ella rushed in first with her Glock drawn. Adrenaline hit her bloodstream like nitro burning fuel. Her heart hammered double-time against her ribs as she swept the foyer.
‘Joseph?’ she shouted. ‘FBI.’
Nothing. Just the particular silence that meant someone wasn't home - or couldn't answer anymore. Behind her, boots scraped wood as the cavalry filed in.
‘Ell, basement door's open,’ Luca called from somewhere behind her. ‘That’s where Thorne said this guy’s collection was.’
The rational part of her brain - the part that wrote reports and testified in court - cataloged the facts: Priest missing. Door forced. Basement accessible. But the other part, the part that still woke up sweating from dreams about past cases, was already painting pictures in her head.
Their killer had staged Eleanor like a doll, had pinned Alfred like an insect.
So what was waiting for her here?
On the wall next to the basement door, she clocked a security panel.
‘Living room clear,’ one of the uniforms called.
‘Kitchen clear,’ said another.
Eleanor and Alfred had both been left beside their collections, and Ella had no doubt the same was true here.
Time to see what was waiting for them. She gave Luca the nod, and he nudged the basement door open. Stairs descended into a burst of orange light at the base.
She went first. The wooden stairs creaked beneath her boots. Old buildings always protested when the living came to collect their dead. Her finger traced the trigger guard of her Glock as muscle memory warred with the sick certainty of what might lie ahead.
Thirteen steps down. Ella counted them without meaning to, her mind latching onto any detail that might keep the inevitable at bay. At the bottom, the collection room opened up before her like some twisted cathedral.
Religious artifacts packed the basement wall to wall. Floor-to-ceiling glass boxes filled with pieces of faith. Gold crosses caught the light and threw it back distorted. Ancient books lay open to illuminated pages, and reliquaries studded with precious stones watched her from behind their display cases.
Then her heart plunged into her gut as her eyes found the centerpiece of this underground shrine.
Because in the center of this private chapel to excess and obsession knelt what used to be Joseph Carpenter.
The body faced away from her, naked and posed in eternal prayer. Elbows rested on a wooden chair while hands clasped in permanent supplication. But it was his back that turned Ella's stomach inside out.
Strips of skin had been carefully peeled back from shoulder blade to hip and pinned into position, creating what looked to Ella like angel wings. Blood had dried to the color of rust, and each layer had been arranged to mimic feathers.
Their collector of collectors had outdone himself.
Behind her, boots scraped concrete as the cavalry caught up.
Then silence as the scene registered.
‘Jesus Christ.’ Reeves sounded like his soul was trying to escape his body. ‘I think I'm gonna be sick.’