CHAPTER TWELVE
Groggy blackness greeted Selena as her eyes strained to open.
Not the kind broken by city glow or a streetlamp through thin curtains. Motel blackness. Dense. Close. The sort that flattened the room into nothing and left Selena half convinced she was still falling through sleep.
The phone was ringing.
Selena stirred with a groan, one arm dragging over the sheet until her fingers found the bedside table. The lamp, the motel notepad, the cold shape of the phone. She fumbled it into her hand and squinted at the screen.
Five a.m. An hour before she was due to get up.
She answered without sitting up. “Raven.”
A beat of static. Then Connor’s voice came through it.
“This is your wake-up call.”
Selena shut her eyes again. “I didn’t order one.”
“Yeah, I know. But this can’t wait.”
The sleep fell away at once. She pushed herself upright, hair falling across her face. “Why?”
A pause came over the line. Not long. Long enough.
“There’s been another murder.”
The room seemed to contract around her.
For a second she said nothing. Her hand tightened around the phone. The air unit in the wall hummed and clicked. Somewhere outside, a truck shifted gears on the road.
“Send me the details,” she said.
“Okay. I’ll meet you at the location.”
The call ended.
Selena lowered the phone and sat very still on the edge of the bed.
Darkness pressed against the motel curtains. The ceiling above her was barely visible, only a deeper rectangle suspended over the room. In that moment its blackness felt less like shadow and more like depth. Like earth over a coffin. Like a grave before the lid was sealed.
She forced herself up.
Fifteen miles north of the motel, the county gave way to thinner roads and older land.
Selena drove past empty fields silvered by dawn and fences leaning under years of weather.
Low mist slid along the ground in places, pooling in dips and hollows.
By the time she turned onto the narrow lane Connor had texted her, the sun had not yet cleared the horizon, but the sky had begun to pale at the edges.
The abandoned chapel stood on a rise above the road.
It was smaller than St. Bartholomew’s. Stone instead of painted wood. Narrow windows. A square tower above the entrance, its bell long gone. Behind it, a mountain shouldered up into the gray morning, the top half veiled in a light band of mist drifting off the slope.
Selena knew that mountain.
She had climbed it with Diane when they were girls, both of them sweating and squabbling on the switchbacks, then eating bruised apples at the summit while their father pretended not to be out of breath. Diane had always walked faster uphill, making it a competition. Selena had hated that.
The memory came and went as she pulled in beside the SUVs.
Red-and-blue flashes rolled over the chapel walls and died in the wet grass.
Police tape had been tied along the front approach.
A deputy stood near it with his hands hooked into his duty belt, posture too stiff to be comfortable.
Tall. Sandy hair. Late twenties, maybe. His skin still held the faint angry marks of old acne across the cheeks, making him look younger.
He straightened further when he saw her step out.
“Agent Raven?”
“That’s me.”
He moved toward her and offered a hand almost too quickly. “Arnold Greeley. Sheriff’s deputy.”
Selena shook it. “Nice to meet you, Deputy.”
His face brightened. “It’s something else having the FBI around.”
No point smiling too much at that. Encouragement had to be rationed with young deputies or you ended up listening to academy questions beside a corpse.
“Show me the scene, please,” Selena said.
Arnold nodded at once and lifted the tape for her. “This way.”
They moved along the side of the chapel, boots wetting in the grass. Selena glanced toward the front doors as they passed.
“Are we not going inside?”
Arnold shook his head. “No, ma’am. That’s not where the body was found.”
A shift, then. Brenda in the church tower.
This one outside. If the killer could move the staging from one kind of site to another, or adapt, when necessary, that made him harder to anticipate.
Patterns mattered. Flexibility on the killer’s part could undo all of that.
The thought began to creep up her spine.
I’m stuck in Elmsview for the foreseeable.
Arnold cleared his throat as they walked. “So how does someone even get into the FBI?”
Selena kept her eyes ahead. “Same way anyone gets into law enforcement. Training. Work. Patience.”
“You always know you wanted it?”
“No.”
“Oh… What changed?”
“A lot of things. Wanting to see the big bad world, I guess. Make a difference. The usual stuff. Leaving here made it all possible.” That last part just slipped out.
The deputy gave a short, eager nod as if that answer contained some hidden lesson. “I’ve thought about it. About applying.”
“That’s good.”
“You think local experience helps?”
“It doesn’t hurt. You have to be dedicated and have an eye for detail. I’m sure as deputy you’ve picked up plenty of transferable skills.”
That seemed to satisfy him for the moment. The ground dipped behind the chapel, and Connor came into view below them.
He stood at the bottom of the slope with his hat off in both hands.
Morning light had not fully reached the hollow yet, leaving the graves in a dull gray wash.
A forensic tech in blue protective gear moved a few yards away, taking photographs with a camera that flashed sharp white against the dimness.
Then Selena saw the body.
A woman lay tied to a horizontal gravestone, arms spread and fixed in place. Dark blood had soaked the front of her clothes and blackened the stone beneath her. Even from a distance there was no mistaking the slackness of death.
Connor turned as Arnold and Selena approached.
“Arnold,” he said, voice flat with fatigue, “you’re supposed to be staying out front to stop anyone from the public coming here.”
Arnold stopped short. “Sorry, Sheriff. I thought I’d get to know Agent Raven and say hi.”
Connor looked from him to Selena. “Was he by any chance asking you about joining the FBI?”
Selena said, “We could always use some more good people.”
Arnold’s face lit up like a porch light. “You hear that, Sheriff Chase?”
Connor sighed through his nose. “Don’t encourage him. This week it’s FBI agent. Next week it’ll be tour guide. He changes his life’s calling every seven days.”
Arnold gave an awkward laugh, seemingly uncertain whether he was being mocked. Connor rescued him by jerking his chin toward the chapel.
“Go back up front, Deputy.”
“Yes, sir.”
The deputy trotted off, visibly straighter than before.
Selena watched him go. “Just finding his way, I guess.”
Connor set his hat back on his head. “That’d be easier if his way didn’t keep leading him into active scenes when he should be doing what he’s told.”
It was strange to see Connor like that. The man with authority. He spoke of Arnold like a scolding big brother, but she could see he cared for him.
Up close, Connor looked like he’d had no more sleep than she had. Stubble darkened his jaw. The lines around his eyes had deepened. Whatever distance had sat between them the last couple of days, the sight of a second body had pressed it flat for now.
“What do we have?” Selena asked.
Connor gestured to the dead woman. “They found her purse a few feet away. Name’s Lauren Gimble. Thirty-eight.”
“No ID issues?”
“Not unless she was carrying someone else’s face in the driver’s license.”
Selena crouched near the body, careful of the marked perimeter. Lauren’s head lolled slightly to one side. Hair matted with dew and blood. Rope at the wrists. Cut throat. More injuries lower down the torso where the fabric had been sliced.
Connor said, “Other than her name, we haven’t run a full background yet.”
The forensic tech finished another sequence of photos and came toward them, pulling off one glove with his teeth before deciding against it and leaving it on.
“Agent Raven?” he said.
“That’s right.”
“Matt Price.” He nodded toward the scene. “Forensic pathologist.”
Up close he was tall, broad-shouldered, shaved head glistening faintly under the hood, with the edge of a tattoo rising from his collar in dark ink before disappearing beneath the protective suit.
“Pleasure to meet you,” Selena said.
Matt tipped his head. “Likewise. Good to have a real professional around here.”
Connor rolled his eyes. “Matt’s the joker around here. Sad thing is, his jokes are terrible.” Selena sensed there was a closeness in the words, like old drinking buddies propping up a bar somewhere at shift’s end.
“Not all of them,” Matt said. “Just the ones I share for you, my man.”
Selena looked at Connor. “Sounds like someone I know.”
The line slipped out before she could stop it. For the first time since coming back to Harlan County, she smiled at him. Small. Brief. Real enough to feel dangerous.
Connor noticed. Of course he noticed.
“I thought Blethan was the forensics man around here as well as coroner,” Selena said.
“Uh,” Matt answered, “he is. But sometimes I get called in to help out when he’s busy. It’s kind of a freelance thing.”
“A freelance forensic pathologist?” Selena asked. She couldn’t believe her ears.
“Before you get all uppity,” Connor interjected, “Matt is fully qualified. He’s helped us out over the years when Blethan is dealing with a big workload, and… I heard about your little conversation with him yesterday.”
“He didn’t like my big-city charm,” Selena explained.
“I bet,” Connor said with a shake of his head. “Anyway, it’s probably better that Matt’s here today rather than him, don’t you think?”
Selena nodded, noting to herself that she’d send a message to Meg and ask the field office to send out a forensics team if one was available, and turned to Matt. “What do you have for us?”
He crouched beside the body, careful where he placed his boots. “Coroner’ll need to confirm, but at first look it’s similar to the first victim. Throat cut. Some additional lacerations. Looks like he tied her up to do it.”
Selena glanced over the ground around them. “Wouldn’t anyone have heard her scream?”
“Unlikely,” Connor said. “Chapel’s been closed for years. Nearest occupied house is over a mile off.”
Matt pointed to the rope at Lauren’s wrists. “Bindings were tight. Some tearing. She fought it for a while.”
Selena let her gaze travel over the gravestone, the body, the arrangement. Then she saw the marks on the older upright stone opposite.
Three vertical lines.
Fresh and dark against weathered gray.
Her stomach tightened.
“Another Roman numeral. This is our third victim,” she said quietly.
Connor looked at her. “You still think there’s another before Brenda?”
“I know it. But why haven’t we found them? That’s the question we haven’t answered yet.”
Matt straightened. “Speaking of finding things. We found a brush in the undergrowth. Blood on it. Most likely what he used to paint those.”
Selena nodded toward the stone. “Get prints done. I doubt we’ll find any, but get them anyway.”
“Already moving on it,” Matt said.
Her attention shifted uphill to the chapel itself. Stone walls. Narrow bell tower. Boarded windows. A place chosen on purpose.
Connor followed her gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“The last murder was in a tower. This time it’s at the foot of one.”
“You think that change matters?”
“I wonder.”
She started up the slope before either man answered.
The ground near the chapel door had turned to churned mud under boots. She saw some forensic markers, isolating a few existing footprints.
“Did Matt get these, then?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Connor said, following. “But I bet the soles will be the same. Custom-made to avoid being traced.”
Selena thought that, too. She turned her attention to the chapel door. Sheet metal had been fastened over the entrance with heavy screws, a rough attempt to keep trespassers out. Selena bent near the frame and ran her eyes over the edges.
Fresh scoring marked the metal near the latch side. Deep scratches. Pry damage. Someone had tried to force it.
“Here,” she said.
Connor and Matt came up beside her.
Selena pointed. “He wanted in.”
Connor leaned closer. “Does this mean he was going to use the chapel tower?”
“It seems likely.” She straightened and looked back down the hill at Lauren’s body stretched across the stone. “But he couldn’t get inside. So he improvised.”
Matt let out a low breath. “That’s not good. A killer that improvises is even more dangerous.”
“Exactly,” Selena said. “It also means that he’ll carry through the murder no matter what, even if the situation isn’t perfect.”
“Stubborn SOB,” Connor said, almost to himself.
“Tenacity and psychopathy are a horrible mix in cases like this,” she responded.
If the killer had a preferred ritual and could alter the location when blocked, then he wasn’t dependent on one precise setup. That made him mobile. Adaptive and confident in his ability to shake things up on the fly.
“We should have patrols check in on churches and holy places in the county. Add them to their patrols. It might deter the killer,” Selena suggested.
“I don’t have the manpower to stake out every church or cemetery,” Connor said, sounding frustrated.
“I know,” Selena said. “The best we can do is have your men drive by the sites on their patrols. It could be enough. We might even get lucky and spot him.”
Connor stood beside her, looking from the damaged door to the corpse below. She turned to him. “Who found the body?”
“That’s the thing,” he said after a moment. “We don’t know.”
He reached into his jacket and took out his phone.
“The call came in from the victim’s phone. Dispatch logged it. I had Cheryl send me the recording.”
He tapped the screen and held it out.
Static crackled. Then a man’s voice, pitched higher than natural, rushed and frightened.
“There’s a dead body at Hawthorne Graveyard. Please. Please send someone.”
Selena listened without moving.
The dispatcher began asking questions. The line cut off.
Matt said, “Might be innocent enough. They could’ve called and gotten cold feet.”
“Maybe,” Connor said.
Selena kept her eyes on the phone a second longer, hearing the strain in the voice, the deliberate panic, the way the caller gave the information and nothing more.
“Or maybe,” she said, “that’s the voice of the killer.”
No one answered.
They all stood there in the growing light, the scarred chapel door beside them, the body below them, the mountain rising behind in a pale sheet of mist. Then the sun broke over the horizon.
Gold touched the upper stones first.
The grave markers threw long shadows across the slope, and the victim lay down below. Cold. Lifeless. Unmoving. A murder that Selena knew must be answered.