CHAPTER NINETEEN
Kate couldn’t drum up any emotion at the sight of Diane Walker’s mutilated body.
The emotion was there, but she couldn’t bring it to the surface.
She felt like she was in shock. Seeing a fourth person with their groin mutilated and their throat slit could do that even to the most seasoned investigator, but it wasn’t Diane’s grisly fate that had seared Kate’s heart.
To her left, Marcus was interviewing Diane’s business partner, Robert Chen.
Robert was actually in shock, staring fixedly at an electrical outlet next to a statue of Mary Magdalene and replying to Marcus in hoarse single syllables.
This was the first time Kate had seen him since last night.
After Cheryl left, Kate had tried to talk to Marcus about arranging some sort of protection for Cheryl, but he had brushed past her without another word.
When she broached the subject this morning, he just growled, “I’ll handle it. ”
He hadn’t spoken to her since. Kate’s shock was due to the fact that whatever might have existed between them in the past was gone now.
All thanks to Cox. Elijah fucking Cox. The Lawgiver. The Lifetaker. The demon that had haunted Kate for over a year and possibly for many years prior. Possibly? No, definitely. Whoever had killed her father, it was under Cox’s instructions they’d killed him.
She regarded Diane, and slowly her own selfish pain receded in the stark reminder of those who had suffered far more than she had.
This was Cox’s fault too. This poor woman whose crimes couldn’t possibly have been great enough to earn this fate.
The partner and friend thirty feet away who had to stare at three evenly spaced holes in a wall to keep from descending into another bout of shrieking. All Cox.
This was the god he worshipped. One of pain. One of torture and loss.
“Diane Walker,” Rivera said to Kate’s right.
“Thirty-nine. Wedding planner. Catered to the upper-middle-class. Not quite fancy enough for destination weddings on private islands, not quite poor enough for ordinary weddings at a person’s home church.
Famous for her abilities to coordinate multiple vendors so that everything ran seamlessly and to placate even the most troublesome and demanding of couples.
That’s what Google reviews says anyway.”
Kate shook her head. “A wedding planner.”
“That’s right.”
“Divorced?”
“No, happily married. Oh, Christ.” Rivera wiped a hand across his brow. “I just realized we’re gonna have to talk to the husband.”
“She wasn’t—” Kate glanced at Robert and Marcus and lowered her voice. “She wasn’t maybe more than just business partners with Chen?”
“We’ll look into it, of course. Maybe. I don’t know. Christ.”
Rivera ran another hand across his brow, and Kate rescued him. “Go figure out the husband. I’ll wrap up at the scene.”
Rivera nodded and trudged out of the chapel to do that.
Kate stared at Diane’s body. She was dressed professionally, in a name brand skirt and a white shirt that fit her attractively without looking slutty.
She wore a gold necklace with a pendant sporting a real pearl ringed with diamonds.
Kate wasn’t a jewelry expert, but she knew a necklace like that would fetch quite a bit of money.
So, the killer’s not motivated by money. Good to know. Excellent investigative work, Special Agent Valentine. Boy, you are sharp today.
She looked away from the body and saw the cipher inscribed at the base of the altar. This was a historic church. The killer had defaced the sanctuary.
That wasn’t unheard of for Cox. In fact, the first murder Kate had ever investigated involving the Lawgiver was the burning of a church with the priest still inside the confessional.
The victim just didn't make sense. The point of the seventh commandment was to protect the seventh commandment.
Targeting a couple who specialized in swinger parties and hooking married people up with other partners made sense.
Targeting a therapist whose guiding philosophy was "cheat on your spouse; you'll be happier that way" made sense.
Killing a wedding planner made no sense.
They'd have to figure out what skeletons were hiding in Diane Walker's closet if they were going to determine how she fell into the killer's bad graces.
Kate took pictures of the scene and the cipher, then walked over to Marcus. He was turning Robert Chen over to a pair of paramedics while another pair walked toward the body of Diane Walker.
“Christ Almighty,” one of the paramedics said. “Whoever did this is one sick bastard.”
“Watch your fuckin’ language,” the other one scolded. “We’re in a church.”
Marcus lifted his chin in acknowledgment when Kate reached him.
“Robert’s the setup guy. Diane worked with the bride and groom to make the plans, and Robert got everything ready and coordinated with the vendors when they arrived.
He showed up early this morning to get started.
Says he saw Diane and thought it was a drunk homeless woman praying. ”
“A homeless woman wearing a designer skirt?”
“He says that’s what tipped him off,” Marcus said. “Says he saw the blood but didn’t want to believe it, so he told himself it was wine. Went to shake her awake. She rolled over, and presto, it’s a murder victim.”
He didn’t seem angry with her. That was good. Maybe last night would blow over.
Sure. And maybe Cox will find the actual Jesus and release a manifesto condemning the murders and urging his followers to run soup kitchens instead.
“Did he have any idea why someone would want to kill Diane?”
"None. Said she was the second-sweetest woman he had ever met, behind his own wife. Sometimes even planned weddings for free when couples couldn't come up with the scratch."
“No one ever expressed dissatisfaction?” Another thought came to her. “What about at a wedding she planned? Anyone start a fight?”
“I asked him if anyone had shown up at a wedding recently and caused trouble, and he said no.”
“Hmm.” Kate looked back at Diane Walker’s body.
The paramedics, directed by a coroner’s assistant, were carefully lifting the body onto a gurney.
“We need to figure out what she was hiding. Our killer wouldn’t target an innocent wedding planner.
She’s hiding skeletons in her closet. We need to figure out what those are.
I’ll bet anything those bones belong in the same crypt as the Carltons’ and Patricia Hammond. ”
“You’re probably right.” He pursed his lips and scowled. Kate braced herself for a return to their previous conflict, but he only said, “Maxwell installed a security camera at his apartment. I called him after I got here, and he sent me footage proving he was home all night. He’s not the killer.”
Kate kept her tone neutral. “Got it.”
Marcus looked back at the body. “I’m just so sick of him.”
Kate didn’t need to ask who he was talking about. “Yeah. Me too.”
They stood there and watched the paramedics take Diane Walker out of the church. Jesus Christ watched from the cupola above, staring lovingly at the blood spilled at His altar.
Marcus broke the brief silence. “Come on. Let’s go see what Diane Walker is hiding.”
***
An hour later as they worked over breakfast at their hotel, the answer was “not much.” Diane Walker was one of the few people Kate had ever come across who she could honestly describe as saintly.
Happily married for eleven years to the same man.
Never divorced from him or anyone else. Donated a substantial amount of her moderately substantial income to charity.
Active in her own church, not the Catholic but the Episcopalian.
Three other employees they talked to broke down in tears upon learning of her death and spoke effusively of her kindness.
No criminal record of any kind. Zilch. Nada. Not even a parking ticket.
“Son of a bitch,” Marcus finally said after hanging up on the treasurer of the Good Citizens Club chapter that Diane chaired. “This woman is an angel.” He frowned. “Was an angel.”
“Has Rivera talked to her husband yet?” Kate asked. “Maybe she was a different person at home.”
“He talked to him, but it was on a collect call. He’s with Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine. He’s going to get home as soon as he can, which will depend on whether or not Russia decides to destroy the airfield he’s supposed to fly out from next week.”
Kate sighed. “Well, shit.”
“Yeah, whole lot of that.” Marcus rubbed his chin and crossed his arms. “So, what now? What do we do?”
She glanced at the nightstand next to her bed.
Her notes were in the top drawer. “I’m going to get back to the cipher.
We’ve run out of leads to chase, so it’s time to go back to basics.
The ciphers always clue us into the motive, and the motive always leads us to the killer.
We keep trying to go for this miracle path where we can find the answers we need without having to work for them.
I think that’s a mistake. We need to go back to what works. ”
“Fine by me,” Marcus said. “You do that. Keep me posted. I’m going to get some fresh air.” He stopped by the door, seemed to wrestle with himself for a moment, then admitted, “Actually, I’m going to call Cheryl.”
Kate looked away from him and once more fought to keep her tone neutral. “All right.”
“I have to do the right thing here, Kate. She didn’t deserve to have this sprung on her the way it was.”
“That’s fine,” Kate replied, losing the battle to keep her tone neutral.
Marcus didn’t say anything else, just left the room.
Kate sat where she was, arms folded across her chest for a moment. Marcus was right. Cheryl didn’t deserve this. She was wrong for Marcus, but she wasn’t a bad person.
Diane didn’t deserve what happened to her either. Neither did Patricia Hammond. Neither did Richard and Vanessa Carlton.
So once again, Kate put her personal feelings aside. She retrieved her notes, spread them out on the table, added the new pictures she took from Diane Walker’s crime scene, and got to work.
Hopefully she had been right earlier, and the mystery would be revealed when she decoded the killer’s notes. Otherwise, she and Marcus were adrift on this case, able to see the hurricane approach but not able to escape it, forced to watch as the storm tore the world apart.