CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Connor headed back from one of the offices carrying a piece of paper he hoped would get them closer to the killer. He found Arnold at the front desk with a yellow legal pad, a half-eaten doughnut, and the expression of a man trying to convince himself that paperwork still counted as progress.
Beside the desk, Cheryl stood on a step stool watering the department’s one surviving plant, a broad-leafed thing in a clay pot that had outlived three dispatchers, a copier fire, and one deputy’s attempt to keep it in his office.
“What now, boss?” Arnold asked.
“I’ve got Dana in archives identifying everyone she can that works or attends the revival from their socials,” Connor said.
“It’s not an exhaustive list, but until we get a warrant, it’s the best thing we have in terms of people online who have mentioned or worked with the revival.
Dana will see if any of them have criminal records.
She’s already given me a preliminary list, so in the meantime, we’ll do the leg work. ”
Connor handed the list over.
Arnold looked up first. “Please tell me we’re not calling all these people.”
Connor set a paper cup of coffee beside him. “We’re calling all these people.”
Cheryl tipped the watering can and asked, “Where’s Selena?”
Connor glanced over. “She’s gone home.”
A slight smile touched Cheryl’s mouth as she turned the pot a fraction and studied the soil.
Connor pointed at her. “You don’t have to be that happy about it.”
Cheryl looked down at him, all calm innocence. “Happy about what?”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m watering a plant.”
“You’re watering it smugly.”
That got a snort out of Arnold, which he tried and failed to turn into a cough.
Cheryl stepped down from the stool. “I’m just saying, the building’s a little less tense when nobody’s glaring at each other from opposite ends of the hallway.”
Connor picked up his hat from the counter, then set it back down. “We don’t glare.”
Arnold looked up from the pad. “You absolutely do.”
Connor gave him a look.
Arnold lifted the doughnut in surrender. “Respectfully, Sheriff.”
Cheryl set the watering can aside. “Anyway, if Agent Raven needed rest, that sounds sensible to me.”
Connor picked up one of Arnold’s pages. “This from the woman who once told me sleep was for county employees and dispatchers were above such weakness?”
“That was during storm season,” Cheryl said. “Different rules applied.”
For a moment the room felt almost normal. Phones rang in the back. Cheryl moved a file from one pile to another and the plant dripped quietly onto the desk like it had been loved too hard.
Then Connor suddenly saw the memory of the three victims. A church tower. A grave. A silo. Three women butchered.
The lightness went out of him at once.
Arnold saw it happen and straightened.
Connor tapped the list. “All right. We start with the ones staying close enough to reach before supper.”
“You want me driving or talking?” Arnold asked.
“Driving first. Talking when I get tired of it.”
Arnold pushed back from the desk. “That’ll be around the second driveway.”
Connor settled the hat on his head. “Oh, ye of little faith.”
The first stop sat three miles outside town in a clapboard house with wind chimes on the porch and ceramic frogs lined up on the steps like sentries.
A woman in her late sixties answered the door in a cardigan buttoned wrong, bright lipstick, and an expression of delighted suspicion.
“Well,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see the law at my front porch today.”
Connor showed his badge. “Mrs. Bernice Toller?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether I owe taxes.”
Arnold coughed into his fist to hide a smile.
Connor kept his face straight. “I’m not here for money. We’d just like to ask about Elias Croft’s revival.”
Bernice opened the door wider. “Come in if you’re not here to insult him.”
The living room smelled of cinnamon and furniture polish. Plastic covers gleamed on the sofa. A tiny white dog on an armchair barked at Connor like it had a personal grievance.
“That’s Chairman Mao,” Bernice said. “He hates men in authority.”
“Can’t imagine why,” Connor muttered.
They sat. Bernice did not. She paced in front of them with all the force of a much younger woman.
“You attended the revival?” Connor asked.
“Three nights,” she said. “Might’ve gone four if my sciatica hadn’t started bargaining with Satan.”
“You speak to Croft directly?”
“Twice.”
“What about?”
“My bunions the first time and despair the second.”
Arnold blinked. “Despair?”
Bernice waved him off. “Just the regular sort. Getting old, everyone disappointing you, television going to hell.”
Connor opened his notebook. “Did you ever see someone named Brenda Colter there? Lauren Gimble? Or Tara Brennan?”
Bernice frowned. “Oh, I know Tara. Pretty girl. Tired-looking. Hospital type. The other two, I couldn’t swear to.”
“Did anybody around the revival take special interest in women who came alone?”
“No.”
“Anybody act strange?”
Bernice stopped pacing. “Sheriff, have you met religious people?”
Connor said nothing.
“We all act strange.”
Arnold lost the fight with his smile.
Connor tried another angle. “What about the people who travel with Croft?”
“Nice enough. His security fella had calves like bridge supports. I remember a woman with gray hair who handed out pamphlets and smiled too much, which I distrust on principle.”
“Any of them seem… dangerous?”
She looked at Connor. “Dangerous? What’s this all about?”
Connor took in a breath. “I’m sorry to say that Tara and the other women I mentioned have been murdered over the last few days.”
“Oh, my heaven… Poor Tara.” She shook her head and rubbed her cheek for a moment in disbelief. Bernice then drew herself up. “But if you’re here trying to pin those murders on Reverend Croft or his flock, save your shoe leather. That man is a servant of God.”
“People can be two things at once,” Connor said.
Her eyes sharpened. “Not him.”
“That certainty come from faith or charm?”
“Experience.” She pointed a red-nailed finger at him. “He remembered my late husband’s name after hearing it once. Men don’t do that unless they’re holy or selling life insurance.”
Connor wrote that down mostly to keep Arnold from laughing.
At the door, Bernice called after them, “If you arrest that man without cause, I’ll write the governor.”
“Please spell my name right,” Connor said.
“I won’t.”
Back in the SUV, Arnold buckled in and shook his head. “I liked her.”
“Of course you did.” Connor started the engine. “Give me the next name on the list.”
The second interview took them to a trailer beside a salvage yard where washing machines, rusted truck doors, and a boat with no bottom sat in crooked rows.
A lanky man in a sleeveless flannel shirt answered holding a ferret.
Connor stopped at the sight of it. He could almost sense Arnold saying Why do all these religious folks keep animals? But his deputy stayed silent.
The man noticed Connor looking and lifted the animal. “This here’s Gideon.”
“Eh… Nice to meet you, Gideon,” Connor said.
Arnold looked delighted. “Does he bite?”
“Only if he senses weakness.”
The man introduced himself as Duane Haskins and waved them inside before they asked. The trailer smelled of fried onions and something sweetly rotten Connor chose not to identify. Gideon vanished into a blanket pile and came back with what looked alarmingly like a thong in his mouth.
Duane took it away without embarrassment.
“You followed the mercy revival?” Connor asked.
“Followed ain’t the word.” Duane scratched his neck. “I do my praying mostly from this trailer, but when I’m up to it, I check out Preacher Croft’s words.”
Connor took in the walls, which were covered with handwritten verses, bumper stickers, and two clocks showing different times.
“You know Croft well?”
“Well enough to know that if the law thinks he’s done something bad, you’re barking up the wrong hymnbook.”
“Humor me. Tell me what your experience with him is.”
Duane sat at the table and leaned back until Connor expected the chair to split. “Croft saved me from a bad season.”
“What kind?”
“A lady left. Transmission blew. Then raccoons got into the crawl space. Things stacked up.”
Arnold nodded solemnly. “Tough run.”
Duane pointed at him. “Exactly. You get it.”
Connor pressed on. “I’m sorry to say, but we’re investigating a triple murder with connections to the revival. The names are Brenda Colter, Lauren Gimble, and Tara Brennan. Any of them sound familiar?”
“Oh man… Tara, yeah. I knew her! A lot of folks in the community did. She did a lot of volunteering and organized a few charity yard sales around and stuff like that.”
Connor looked up from the notebook. “You knew her well?”
“Not much, really. She was my nurse when I was in the hospital to get my gall bladder removed. Saw her at two services, maybe three. Stood near the back. Sang like she didn’t want anybody hearing how much she meant it.”
That was more than they had gotten from Bernice.
“Do you remember if she talked to anyone at the revival? Or if you ever saw a man perhaps showing her unwanted attention?”
“Might’ve spoken with one of the bus ladies. Might’ve prayed with Preacher. Hard to say.”
“What about the men around the bus?”
“No idea.”
Connor watched him. “Ever hear any rumors about the revival, like someone getting violent?”
Duane’s expression shifted. “You want me to say something ugly.”
“I want the person who killed Tara and two others.”
“Then find them without stepping on God’s work.”
Arnold said, “Nobody’s stepping on anything.”
Duane lowered his voice. “You lawmen always think you understand what’s happening. Most times you’re just early to the wrong conclusion. You can’t see what’s really there.”
Connor had heard the same thought in cleaner language from Croft’s lawyer.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means evil doesn’t always sit where the crowd’s looking. You might even find it in your own department, Sheriff.”