CHAPTER TWENTY
The ringing dragged Selena up from a sleep so deep, waking felt like breaking through ice to breathe.
Gray skies pressed at the edges of the windshield. Her neck hurt. One leg had gone numb where it was bent against the passenger door. For a second she did not know where she was. Then came the smell of stale coffee, Connor’s aftershave, and the fairground mud caked along the bottom of the car.
Connor sat behind the wheel with the phone to his ear. He was awake as they were taking turns on the stakeout.
“Yes,” he said. “We’re on our way.”
He listened a moment longer.
“No, don’t let anyone inside until we get there. Keep the perimeter wide.”
The call ended.
Selena straightened in the seat and rubbed at her face. “What’s happened?”
Connor turned toward her. Dawn showed the fatigue in him now. The stubble, the flatness around the eyes, the hard set of his mouth.
“There’s been another murder.”
The words cleared the sleep from her faster than cold water could have.
“Where?”
“An old grain silo on the northern edge of the county. Patrol got called by the landowner.”
Selena looked past him through the windshield toward the revival grounds in the distance. The bus sat where it had sat all night, still and sealed.
A bitter taste rose in her mouth.
“How long ago?”
“The body was just found. No time of death yet, but it looks like it was during the night.”
Which meant while they had been here.
Watching the wrong place.
Selena reached for the door handle. “Let’s go.”
The silo stood alone in a field gone dull with early light.
By the time they pulled up, the sun had not fully broken over the horizon.
A pale wash sat low behind the farmland, flattening everything into cold color.
The old structure rose out of the earth like a rusted shell, tall and cylindrical, with one side patched in places where metal had split and been hammered back into shape.
A sheriff department’s SUV sat near the gate.
Yellow tape stirred weakly in the breeze.
Beyond it, the fields spread flat and empty to a line of trees in the distance.
Deputy Arnold waited near the entrance with a notepad in one hand.
The first morning Selena had met him, eagerness had hung off him like a second uniform. Today all of that was gone. His face looked drawn. His shoulders seemed to slope under the weight of the vest.
As soon as they stepped out, Arnold came toward them.
“Sheriff. Agent Raven.”
Connor nodded. “You all right, Arnold?”
Arnold looked past him toward the silo and swallowed. “No, sir.”
That answer sat between them for a second.
Then Arnold glanced at Selena. “You think we can catch this guy?”
Not do you have a lead. Not what do you make of it. He seemed more desperate.
Selena met his eyes. “We’re doing our best, Arnold. What’s got you so rattled?”
Arnold gave a short nod, though it did not look like comfort.
“I… I knew the victim,” he said. “Tara Brennan. She used to babysit my kid brother when we were young.”
Connor’s expression softened by a fraction. “You want me to get another deputy in for the day?”
Arnold drew a breath through his nose and straightened. “No, sir. I can do this.”
Connor nodded. “All right.”
Selena patted Arnold on the arm, her heart going out to him. “I’m sorry. We’ll catch whoever’s behind all this.”
Near the gate an old farmer stood with both hands wrapped around the top rail, cap pulled low over a weathered face the color of old leather.
He was spare and bent but still looked durable, the kind of man who had spent a lifetime outside and let the land etch itself into him.
White stubble shadowed his jaw. His coat hung open over plaid flannel and bib overalls patched at one knee. Mud clung thick to his boots.
Connor angled toward him. “Hi. I’m Sheriff Chase, this is Special Agent Raven from the FBI. Are you the one who found her?”
The old man nodded once. “Name’s Walter Epp.”
His voice came out rough and dry.
“Please walk us through it,” Connor said. Selena felt a change in Connor. He was getting used to the procedure of this now. The procedure of murder investigation.
Walter rubbed at his chin with cracked fingers.
“Came out just after sunup to check the lower pasture. Cows pushed through the fence on the north side yesterday. I was gonna mend it before the rain this afternoon.” He jerked his head toward the silo.
“Door was open on this old silo. That ain’t normal.
Kids used to mess around out here years back, but not lately. ”
“You hear anything during the night?” Selena asked.
Walter spit into the dirt, then shook his head. “Nothing. Wind picked up around midnight. That old metal rattles when the gusts hit it. If somebody was in there, I didn’t know it.”
He looked toward the silo and the muscle in his cheek twitched.
“Should’ve stayed shut,” he muttered. “Whole place should’ve been torn down years ago.”
Connor thanked him, then ducked under the tape with Selena at his side.
The walk to the silo felt longer than it should have.
Mud sucked at their boots. Selena was careful not to stand in existing boot prints, and she noticed the same custom boot marks from the other scenes.
The morning had that raw early edge that made every sound travel.
A crow called from somewhere unseen. Beyond the fields, a tractor coughed to life on distant land.
Inside, the air changed at once.
It smelled of old grain dust and blood. The early morning wind poked through unseen holes somewhere in the structure, whistling slightly.
The silo’s curved interior held the sound strangely. Every shift of a boot came back a half-second late. Light slipped in through seams in the metal and the open door, striping the walls in pale gray.
Matt Price, the forensic pathologist, stood near the far side with a camera hanging from his neck, flash rigged above it, moving with the patient care of a man who had already seen too much to rush.
His forensic coveralls made him look almost anonymous until he turned and Selena saw recognition settle into his face.
“Morning,” Price said.
On the ground near the base of the curved wall sat Tara Brennan.
The pose was the same. Chair. Hands arranged. Head slightly bowed. The terrible deliberation of it. But this was not a church or a cemetery. This was not holy ground. Selena wondered what had changed.
Selena stopped a few feet short and took the scene in piece by piece because that was easier than taking it in whole.
Hospital scrubs beneath the victim’s coat she’d never gotten to remove.
Hair fallen over one shoulder. Blood at the throat and dried dark on the front of the fabric.
Her shoes were muddy. One had nearly come off.
The skin of one wrist was scraped raw as if she had fought hard against being dragged.
On the metal wall above and behind her, the message had been painted in thick strokes.
DEUS MERETRICES SEPELIT
“You know this one?” Connor asked.
“No,” Selena said. “I’ll send it to the linguist.”
She took out her phone, snapped a picture, then typed in the words to see what a Google translation would pop out.
Selena whispered a rough translation. “God buries harlots.”
Beneath the words, large and unmistakable, stood more Roman numerals:
IV
Connor looked around at the curved walls. “This place isn’t religious.”
Selena did not take her eyes off the body. “He’s changed up the setting.”
Price lowered his camera. “You mean he gave up on churches?”
“Not exactly.” Selena stepped sideways for a better angle on the writing. “He’s shifted from houses of worship to something else isolated. A place where he wouldn’t be disturbed. It’s possible he worried we’d be watching abandoned churches in the county.”
Connor glanced up at the metal ribs of the silo, then back at the words in blood. “For a killer who likes to make statements, this still has to be deliberate. He picked this place for a reason.”
“You’re right.”
Price frowned. “What are you seeing?”
Selena looked toward the open top where a thin circle of morning light showed high above. “Harvest.”
Price blinked. “What?”
“This isn’t about holy ground,” she said. “Or not only that. A grain silo. It’s a harvest.” Her eyes moved to the writing again. “In Christian imagery, souls are harvested by the Lord.”
Price let that settle. “So, the killer might believe he’s harvesting these souls for God?”
Connor’s mouth tightened. “It does all seem to revolve around something like that.”
Selena crouched slowly, careful of the floor around the chair. “Three women. Same staging. Same accusation of immorality.” She nodded once toward the numeral on the wall. “But there it is again. A number one larger than the victim count. Where is number one?”
Price followed her gaze. “You think he could be counting ahead? Like the number could be for the next victim rather than this one?”
“That’s a great catch,” Selena said. “Maybe he thinks of the act itself as part of a sequence bigger than the bodies. But I still have a hunch the number is referencing the current victim, which means we still haven’t found the first.”
Connor folded his arms. “The first two scenes were abandoned churches. This one’s a silo. If it’s about symbols more than sites, we’ve got a wider field than I’d like. Anything you can tell us, Matt?”
Price took another photograph. The flash popped white against the steel. “The victim was likely brought here, not killed on site. No heavy blood pool under the chair.”
Selena nodded. “Different again.”
Price glanced at the scrapes on Tara’s wrist and the dirt on her hem. “There was a struggle somewhere before this, given the bruising on her arms.”
“So, he was forced to kill her immediately rather than let her escape or do him damage,” Connor pondered out loud.
A cold frustration pressed at the base of Selena’s throat. “We should get forensics to check under her nails. If she struggled, she might have scratched him and got some DNA.”
“Already ahead of you,” Price answered.
While Selena and Connor had been watching Croft’s bus through the trees, Tara Brennan had been taken somewhere else entirely.
Whether the killer had followed the woman from work or lain in wait near her home, he had moved with confidence.
Planned it. Executed it. Then transported her here and staged her before daylight.
Connor looked at Price. “Anything else?”
“Not yet. Tire marks outside, some boot marks with the same custom boot sole, but this whole area’s churned up from farm equipment. We’ll cast what we can.” Price shifted his attention to Selena. “A little birdy told me you guys were at the Elias Croft revival. You think it’s connected?”
“Nothing is safe around here,” Connor bemoaned. “Let me guess, Cheryl’s the little bird.”
“I think the revival ties in as a place where he’s identifying the victims,” Selena said. “Whether the preacher, Croft, himself ties in is still the question. We need to figure out if Tara had a connection there, too.”
Connor cast one last look at the body, then nodded toward the door. “Let’s talk to Arnold again. He might be able to tell us more about the victim since he knew her.”
Outside, the morning had brightened by degrees. Walter Epp now sat on the tailgate of an old pickup parked near the fence, cap in his hands, staring at the ground. Arnold stood by the SUV, looking down at his notepad.
Selena approached him alone while Connor spoke with Epp for a moment.
“How are you holding up?”
“Okay, Agent Raven,” Arnold answered.
“Please, call me Selena,” she said, her voice soft. “What can you tell me about Tara Brennan?”
Arnold looked up. Fatigue and old grief had mixed into something tender and embarrassed on his face.
“She worked nights at the hospital. Lived alone. A great person.”
Selena kept her voice level. “I know you might not want to hear this, but was Tara known for being promiscuous?”
Arnold’s ears colored. For a second he seemed younger than he had before, all that early eagerness showing through the hurt.
Then he nodded.
“Yeah.”
A gust moved the tape behind them. Arnold looked off toward the field rather than at her.
“Years ago,” he said, and stopped.
Selena waited.
He swallowed. “Me and her once…”
The rest died in his throat.
“I’m sorry,” Selena said quietly. “The killer’s targeting women with that sort of reputation.”
Connor had come up behind her without noise. “Is it possible he had relations with all three?”
Selena thought of Brenda Colter, Lauren Gimble, Tara Brennan. Different lives. Different ages. Different corners of the county. One man bedding all of them felt too neat. Too human, in the wrong way.
“Possible, but…” she said after a moment.
“I don’t think so. There’s no indication from the first two victims of sexual assault.
And the DNA swabs came back negative. This feels more distant than that.
He watches. Judges. Builds a case in his own head.
Then he steps in and does what he thinks must be done. ”
Connor stepped over to them. “A watcher.”
“Yes.” Her gaze drifted back toward the silo. “And now with this harvest angle, he may believe he’s sacrificing promiscuous women for some divine purpose.”
Arnold rubbed at one eye with the back of his wrist. “Sick bastard.”
“Was Tara religious?” Selena asked.
That got a quicker answer.
“Yeah. Especially the last few years. Started going to things. Church events, prayer groups. More than she used to.”
Selena held his gaze. “Do you follow her on social media?”
Arnold gave a confused little nod, then reached into his pocket for his phone. “Yeah.”
“Let me see, if you don’t mind?”
He unlocked it and handed it over.
Tara’s profile came up with a few taps. Selena scrolled past work photos, family pictures, a plate of diner pancakes under bad lighting, a tired selfie after a shift, then stopped.
One week ago.
A photograph under a white tent at dusk. Stage lights. Folded chairs. A caption beneath it about needing to hear something hopeful.
The revival.
Connor leaned in at her shoulder. “This isn’t just coincidence now.”
Selena enlarged the image. In the corner, half out of frame, she could even make out Croft’s bus.
“All three victims we know of were at that revival,” Connor said.
Selena handed the phone back to Arnold. The line of the case had just narrowed and sharpened at the same time.
“Let’s bring in Elias Croft for questioning,” she said. “He was hiding something. I’m sure of it.”
Connor exhaled and glanced toward the road. “We’d better hurry before they pack up and leave.”