CHAPTER SEVENTEEN #2
“Perhaps. I don’t keep watch over who keeps watch over me.”
“You ever visit members of your flock outside of the revival?” Selena inquired.
“Not that I recall.”
Connor grimaced. “You don’t seem to recall a lot.”
“Memory is not a filing cabinet, Sheriff.”
“No,” Selena answered. “But guilt tends to dull it.”
That one drew the first true pause from him.
Only a second. Enough.
Croft lowered his head a fraction, then looked back up with hurt so measured it almost impressed her.
“If you’re asking whether I had anything to do with these deaths, the answer is no.
I’m devastated by them. I will pray for those women, and for whoever loved them, and for the soul of the monster who did this.
But I will not confess to a crime I did not commit simply because disbelievers like yourselves wish to make a villain of a preacher. ”
Footsteps sounded in the corridor. Light ones this time. The door opened before Selena could look back.
A woman in her fifties stepped in carrying a paper cup and a small pill bottle. Hair pinned up. Nurse’s shoes. Tired face. She stopped when she saw the room’s occupants.
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Croft’s tone softened at once. “It’s all right, Marlene.”
The woman held up the cup and pills. “Time to take your medicine, Preacher.”
Connor’s eyes flicked toward Selena for half a second.
Croft smiled as though embarrassed by the interruption. “One of the humiliations of age.”
Selena didn’t think he was that old, but didn’t press. She’d heard enough.
Marlene set the cup on the desk, shook two tablets into Croft’s hand, and waited until he swallowed them. Selena noticed the ease of it. This had happened often enough that nobody needed to speak.
When Marlene left, Croft dabbed at the corners of his mouth with a napkin and set it aside.
“If that’s all,” he said, “I hope you find the monster who did this.”
“We’ll be back another time,” Selena said. “I’m sure.”
Croft rose.
“My friends will escort you from the bus.”
Connor stood more slowly than Croft did, like a man making a point of not being hurried. Selena rose beside him. Close up, the preacher looked tired around the eyes in a way the pulpit lights had hidden.
Then they left.
Leon and the other guard were already in the bus corridor.
No one touched them. No one needed to.
The walk back through the bus felt narrower this time. Selena could feel the guards behind them and hated how deliberate every step became because of it. At the front, Leon stepped aside and held the door open. Cool night air slid in.
“Have a nice night,” Leon said with a grin.
Connor turned toward him, but Selena tugged gently on his arm. “Leave it.”
It reminded her of a time Connor got into a bar fight and she tried to pull him away. At least this time he listened.
Outside, the singing from the tent had shifted to applause and scattered laughter. More people were beginning to drift toward the lot, stopping to talk under the floodlights before heading home.
Connor waited until they had put twenty yards between themselves and the bus before speaking.
“I don’t trust this setup at all.”
Selena looked back once at the cream-colored side of the bus, the dark windows hiding whatever moved within. “He’s hiding more than he gave us. I just can’t be certain what.”
Connor opened the passenger door for her by habit, then seemed to remember himself and let it swing back toward the frame. “We’ll get the warrant in the morning.”
“Maybe.”
His head turned. “Maybe?”
“I’m going to hang around awhile. See what I can find.”
Connor stared at her. “You don’t have a ride.”
“I’ll get a cab or something.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“There’s got to be somebody running one.”
A humorless look crossed his face. “That’s optimistic even for you.”
Selena slipped her hands into her coat pockets. “You go back and see if you can get my car fixed. I’ll need it tomorrow.”
Connor did not move.
“I think I should stay with you,” he said.
“I don’t need protecting.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Turn this into a pride contest.”
Annoyance flared. Selena pulled her coat back just enough for the holster at her hip to show beneath it. “I’ll be fine.”
Connor’s eyes dropped to the gun and back to her face. “You always think you don’t need protecting.”
“I usually don’t.”
“Everyone does.”
For a moment the fairground noise seemed farther away.
Selena let the coat fall closed. “I’ll call if I need anything.”
“You won’t.”
“I will,” she said. “I’m not that stupid.”
He looked like he wanted to argue longer. Instead, he dragged a hand over his mouth and glanced toward the tent, then back to her. Irritation sat plain on him now. “Just hang here for an hour,” he said, seemingly resigned to Selena’s stubbornness. “I don’t want you out here any longer than that.”
Selena rolled her eyes. “I’m not your wife anymore, Connor. I’m an FBI agent; I think I can handle a small-town religious revival.”
Connor made a disgusted sound under his breath. “You’re impossible.”
A small smile almost rose and didn’t. “Drive safe. See you tomorrow.”
Selena watched him huff away toward his SUV, get in, and drive away.
She waited until the taillights disappeared past the line of parked trucks.
Then she moved.
The fairground’s edge was darker beyond the parked vehicles and portable toilets, where a fringe of trees marked the drop toward a drainage creek.
A narrow path of flattened grass led that way.
Selena followed it until the tent lights dimmed behind branches and the bus came into partial view through the gaps.
A copse of trees gave her enough cover.
She stepped into it and stopped.
Underfoot, the ground was soft with old leaves.
The trunks leaned at odd angles, bent by years of wind and bad light.
Branches scraped against one another overhead with a dry, restless sound.
Every so often they creaked as the night breeze moved through them, muttering above her in voices too low to make out.
From here she could watch the side of the bus, the security men at their station, and the stream of worshipers beginning to spill from the tent in twos and threes.
A woman laughed near the lot, then hushed herself.
A child ran ahead of his parents and got called back.
Near the bus door, Leon lit a cigarette and smoked with his shoulders squared to the dark as if expecting it to come at him.
Selena settled deeper into the shadows and kept her eyes on the bus while the trees above shifted and whispered over her head, telling secrets she would never understand.