CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE #3
“He had a cincture,” Hero countered stubbornly.
“And a few pictures and mementos of a girl isn’t exactly a shrine to her.
He’s admitted to having contact with her, in regard to the missing children only.
But,” and here she hesitated, adding reluctantly, “he did also confess to having feelings toward her beyond friendship. Unrequited feelings.”
“Fuck.”
She grimaced and joined him at the table, dropping wearily into the chair holding her scapular. “It’s bad, I know. But is it damning?”
“It’s motive.” He flipped through the papers, reading all the reports from the crime-scene investigators, stunned that this entire operation had been happening without their involvement.
“It’s the same motive you pinned on Father Kellan when you thought he was our prime suspect.
So it’s entirely plausible, right, and we just missed it? ”
She scoffed. “Maybe. But I just don’t buy it. I mean, how many jealous lovers could one nun have?” She snagged the witness statement. “All this subterfuge and secret assignations. When did she have time to teach?”
Keen sighed and reshuffled the remaining pages into a neat pile. “Are we just angry that this happened without us? That somehow we misread the entire situation?”
“Do you really believe that, Keen?” She crumpled the witness statement into a ball, her eyes smoldering behind her tinted glasses.
Shockingly, the paper didn’t burst into flames.
“This sudden resolution seems just a bit too convenient for me to stomach. I feel like someone is manipulating the situation, handing us a suitable patsy to appease the town and the peacekeepers, to keep us off the real target.”
“What if he doesn’t confess?” he asked. “Will they shut down the investigation anyway? Is everyone so sure that Braun is guilty?”
Her lips pressed into a hard line. “Dewey seems elated, and he’s not the only one.
They want a suspect. They want a murderer, someone handy and human who can be tossed in a cell forever or dangled at the end of a noose.
Our suspicions are too complicated for them.
If we’re right, then something quite hideous and dangerous is afoot and that would send all of Havenside into a tizzy, now, wouldn’t it? ”
The voices from the other room rose suddenly, roaring through the speaking tube: “Yes! I took her into the woods, but it’s not what you think. We were just talking–”
“What went wrong? What made you snap? Just admit it, Braun! Admit what you’ve done!”
“She needed my help! Someone was harassing her–”
“ You were harassing her, Braun! And when she refused you, you raped her, held her captive, then cut out her tongue to appease your bloodlust! You’re nothing but a depraved monster and I’ll see you hanged.”
“No! No! I’m not – I’m not a killer!”
Jerry’s denials dissolved into bitter weeping. Hero stood and returned to the window, arms crossed tightly to her chest. “Another round of the same shit,” she muttered, her back stiff with displeasure. “He’s not going to confess.”
“Because he didn’t do it, or because he’s a cold-blooded killer?
” Keen picked up one of the letters Jerry had addressed to Sister Catarine, one that hadn’t been delivered yet.
It was innocent enough, a discussion about the missing children, Jerry confessing his deep worry and pleading for help.
He frowned, re-reading the letter. Why was he asking Sister Catarine for help?
Was she even in a position to give any assistance, or was Jerry’s plea a ploy to get her attention, the act of a stalker?
“It’s because he didn’t do it,” Hero replied with a certainty he envied.
“I read all of those letters. Twice. They were subtle in broaching the true subject, avoiding naming anyone or anyplace directly, but it is clear to me that Catarine was starting to investigate Bright Renewal, as we already suspected, and needed Jerry’s help. ”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite as clear to Keen.
He wasn’t seeing the subtext his partner was, but it made sense given all they’d learned.
Catarine had been sniffing around, asking questions, and someone had wanted her silenced.
If Jerry had been helping her, what better way to rid oneself of another nuisance than to make him the prime suspect in her murder?
The voices from the other room rose once more, the ebb and flow following a pattern, highs and lows, cajoling and threatening, though Smith and Coates seemed to be veering increasingly toward threatening.
After so many hours, they had to be getting desperate for results.
Sometimes it worked and the suspect spilled, but the unrelenting pressure didn’t seem to be working with Jerry.
Despite his broken demeanor, he remained steadfast in proclaiming his innocence.
“They won’t ask him the right questions,” Hero complained, her words a low growl.
“Who was harassing her? Why would she go into the woods with someone she hardly knew? A man, no less. What had her so worried? And how in Hell do they think Jerry drained her very essence? How did he hold her for six days and no one noticed? Have they even looked at Virchow’s forensic report? ”
“Can we take over the questioning?” he asked, eager to be able to talk with Jerry himself.
Hero was right: his friend was being railroaded.
He was a convenient dupe from the wrong side of town, and people would accept his guilt without a murmur – quite happily, in fact.
But he refused to believe Jerry was guilty.
True, he’d lost touch with him over the years, but they’d been close once, and the boy he’d known would have been incapable of such a vicious crime.
It’s been years. I knew the boy, but what about the man?
“I said I’d give them a chance,” she said. She turned to him and started to wrap her hair into a tidy bun. “Now let’s run those idiots out of there.”