CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The address led Selena ten miles out of Elmsview to a low brick building, set back from the road behind a stand of bare trees.
The sign by the entrance was plain enough to miss if a person was not looking for it.
OUR LADY HOUSE RECOVERY CENTER
A small parking lot sat out front with two staff cars, a church van, and a rusted pickup with one headlight missing. The wind moved dry leaves along the curb in little scraping bursts. Nothing about the place invited drama. That made the knot in Selena’s stomach worse.
She parked, killed the engine, and looked once at the note in Jessie’s handwriting before folding it and slipping it into her pocket.
Inside, the air smelled of that flat overheated scent buildings got when they were trying too hard to seem comfortable.
The lobby held a few padded chairs, a Bible on a side table, and a stack of pamphlets about relapse prevention and family trauma.
A television mounted high in one corner played a muted daytime talk show with captions nobody seemed to be reading.
A woman in lavender scrubs sat behind the front desk.
She looked up as Selena approached. “Can I help you?”
“Hi… Yes. I’m looking for Donna Murphy?”
The woman’s expression changed only slightly, but enough. “She’s not taking visitors.”
“I need to speak with her.”
“She’s detoxing.”
Selena let that settle a moment.
“I understand. But this is important.”
The receptionist gave her a measured look that suggested she had heard that line before from husbands, parents, ex-boyfriends, and perhaps God Himself.
“Important usually still waits during recovery.”
Selena reached into her jacket and showed her badge.
The woman read it, looked back up, and sat a little straighter.
“I’m Agent Raven with the FBI. I really need to see her,” Selena said.
Another pause.
Then the receptionist picked up the phone on her desk, pressed a button, and said quietly, “Can someone come to the front, please?”
A minute later a woman in her fifties with iron-gray hair and a face worn into steadiness came through a side door. She wore no uniform beyond a cardigan and practical shoes. Counselor maybe. Administrator. Somebody used to deciding how much truth a stranger needed.
“This is Agent Raven with the FBI,” the receptionist said. “She needs Donna Murphy.”
The older woman looked at Selena. “I’m Carol Sutter. Donnas in a rough place today.”
“I won’t be long.”
Carol’s eyes stayed on her face a beat, judging tone more than words.
“We’ve had enough police here to last a while, chasing people up when they just want to get better.”
“I’m not here for a drug case.”
That seemed to matter.
“It’s a triple homicide investigation.”
Carol nodded once. “All right. But if I think she’s shutting down, I’ll end it.”
Selena followed her through a secured door and down a narrow corridor painted in soft neutral colors somebody had chosen to feel calming. The effect lasted until the sound reached her. A cough from one room. Someone retching in another. A woman crying in short angry bursts behind a closed door.
Carol kept walking.
“She’s been coming off heroin for four days,” she said quietly. “Today’s bad.”
Selena swallowed. “Jessie Chase knows her. She told me about her.”
That got Carol’s attention. “Jessie’s been good to her.”
The corridor ended in a small room with a single bed, a chair, and a narrow window looking out over the side yard. Carol knocked first, then opened the door without waiting.
Donna Murphy sat propped against the wall on the bed, wrapped in a blanket despite the heat of the building.
She looked younger than Selena had expected and older than her years at the same time.
Hollow-cheeked. Sweat clinging at the hairline.
Arms thin under the sleeves of a rehab T-shirt.
Her skin had the drawn, feverish look of someone fighting her own body minute by minute.
When she saw Selena, suspicion flickered first.
“I s… s… said no visitors.”
Carol stayed in the doorway. “This is Agent Raven with the FBI. She says it’s important.”
Donna’s eyes moved to the badge clipped at Selena’s belt, then away again. “No.”
Selena stepped just inside. “I only need a few minutes.”
Donna let out a broken little laugh and curled deeper into the blanket. “Everybody says that. Could you leave us alone for a moment?”
Carol glanced between them as though she didn’t know what to do. “I’ll be right outside if you need me, Donna.”
The door closed.
For a moment neither woman spoke.
The room held the sour, exhausted smell of sickness and damp sheets. On the small table beside the bed sat a paper cup half full of water, an untouched banana, and a crumpled tissue. Selena took the chair and sat rather than stand over her.
“I’m a friend of Jessie’s,” she said.
Donna’s eyes came back to her and focused a little more clearly. “Jessie?”
Selena nodded. “She said you might be able to help me.”
Donna stared at the blanket over her knees. “Jessie’s a saint.”
A small smile touched Selena’s mouth despite the circumstances. “She is that.”
Donna rubbed her hand over her face, then winced like even that hurt. “She comes by regular. Even when I tell her not to.”
“She cares about you.”
Donna looked toward the window and said nothing.
Selena let the silence sit just long enough not to feel like pressure. Then she said, “Jessie told me you had a bad experience at the revival with Elias Croft. And I think it might be important in a case I’m investigating.”
The effect was immediate.
Donna’s face tightened. Moisture sprang into her eyes so fast it seemed her body had been waiting for the subject to arrive.
“I don’t want to go into that.”
“Why?”
She shook her head. “I just don’t. It’s too painful.”
Selena leaned forward slightly. “Donna, women’s lives are at stake.”
Donna let out a shaky breath and clutched the blanket tighter around herself. “I didn’t do anything.”
“I’m not saying you did.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because three women are dead and all of them attended that revival.”
Donna shut her eyes. Tears slipped out anyway. “Three? My God…”
“Please, if there’s anything you can tell me, it could be important, even if it doesn’t seem like it. What did Elias Croft do to you that’s so upsetting?”
“It wasn’t Elias,” she said at last, voice raw.
Selena stayed very still. “Who was it?”
Donna opened her eyes again and looked past Selena rather than at her.
“A man named Nolan Pruitt. He plays keyboard at the revival.”
Selena thought for a moment and barely remembered him. She was almost disappointed it wasn’t Elias who had wronged Donna. “Tell me what happened. What did this Nolan Pruitt do?”
Donna’s mouth trembled before any words came.
“I met him after one of the services,” she said. “He was nice. Quiet. He listened. We spent time together.”
The last word came out with a kind of shame attached to it.
“You started seeing him?”
“For a while.”
“How long?”
Donna gave a weak shrug. “Long enough to fall in love.”
Selena did not push the timeline yet. Not while Donna looked this close to splintering.
“You cared about him.”
Donna laughed once, bitter and small. “I thought he cared about me. He said that I was different from the other women he knew.” Her mouth twisted. “That I was trying. That God still had plans for me.” She wiped at her nose with the back of her hand and looked down. “I believed him. Stupid, right?”
“No. It’s never stupid to believe in something.”
Donna’s face crumpled then. Not loudly. Nothing theatrical. Just the quiet collapse of someone who had been holding a private grief in the same place too long.
“I got pregnant,” she whispered.
Selena said nothing.
The room seemed to contract around the words.
Donna pressed a fist to her mouth, then lowered it again with effort. “I didn’t even know at first. I was still using some heroin. Not as much. I was trying to stop. Trying to be better.” Tears slid down into the corners of her mouth. “Then… Then the baby didn’t make it. Oh God help me…”
A chill moved through Selena, slow and exact. Her heart broke for Donna. She knew how much addiction could ruin someone’s life, no matter how well or how badly it was already going. No matter how strong a person was, it could consume them.
Selena spoke gently. “How far along were you?”
“Six months.” Donna drew a hard breath that hitched on the way out.
Selena thought of the Latin on the walls. The word buries. The Roman numeral four at Tara’s murder scene. The killer’s obsession with impurity, punishment, sacrifice, correction. She kept her face neutral and let Donna keep speaking.
“How did Nolan react?”
Donna’s answer came after a pause full of swallowing and breath.
“I think it broke something inside of him. Then he just went cold.”
“Cold how?”
“He wouldn’t touch me. Wouldn’t look at me. Like I’d become something dirty.” Donna’s hands twisted in the blanket. “He said I’d sinned against what God had given me. Like I’d done it on purpose!”
Selena felt the final piece begin to slide into place. A torrent of emotions ran through her. Pain for Donna. Sadness for the tragedy. Yet, alongside it, excitement. Yes. Excitement that she was about to break the case wide open.
“Did Nolan ever seem violent or dangerous?”
Donna nodded and started crying harder, shoulders shaking now despite the effort to stay controlled.
“He hit me more than once. Then when that wasn’t enough… He just turned his back on me,” she said. “Just walked away. Wouldn’t answer calls. Wouldn’t talk. Nothing. It was just one mistake!”
Selena heard the phrase before she fully thought it.
One mistake.
She remembered what Arnold had said of Tara.
What county talk had implied about Brenda and Lauren.
The way Vicki in the diner had talked about people getting assigned reputations young and never shedding them.
Promiscuous. Fallen. Wrong. Women the killer believed had made themselves impure.
Women who were used and then tossed on the trash heap.
Women who had made their own mistakes. Mistakes surrounding their sex lives.
Something he no doubt believed should be kept for creating life.
Mistakes that he believed should be fatal in the eyes of God.
And before the murders, before the staged bodies, before the Latin on the walls, there had been a death. The one marked with a Roman numeral one. The first.
Not counted by anyone else. Not investigated. Not even necessarily criminal.
But to a man like this?
A baby lost in utero, carried by a woman with a history of addiction, then blamed on her by the father.
The first death.
Not a murder, but a death that could have cracked his mind so badly that twisted forms of scripture poured out between those cracks.
Selena sat back slowly.
Donna saw the change in her expression and looked frightened. “What is it?”
“Nothing,” Selena said, too quickly.
“That… that look wasn’t nothing.”
Selena measured her next words. Donna had given her something huge, but not because she owed law enforcement clarity. She had given it out of pain. Selena didn’t want to add any more to it.
“You may have helped me understand him,” Selena said.
Donna stared down at her hands. “You think… You think he killed those women on the news, don’t you?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“This is all my fault! If the baby had lived… Maybe he wouldn’t have been like this…”
The sentence came out like confession, not information.
Selena’s throat tightened.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Donna laughed once through tears, empty of humor. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes,” Selena said, firmer now. “I do. No one becomes a killer overnight. They may have tragedy in their lives, but they’re still responsible for how they behave.
If Pruitt is what I think he is, he shouldn’t be giving anyone advice on what’s moral and good.
You have to look after yourself, Donna. You weren’t in control.
But now you’re doing the right thing. You should be proud.
I know Jessie will be when she sees you walk out of here clean and sober. ”
Donna looked at her then, really looked, and whatever she saw there seemed to settle her by a fraction.
Silence held for a few seconds.
Outside in the corridor somebody called for water. A door opened and closed. The building went on with its work of trying to drag damaged people back toward themselves.
Selena rose from the chair.
“Will you be all right if I go?”
Donna gave a weak shrug that meant nothing and everything.
At the door Selena paused.
“If Nolan Pruitt contacts you,” she said, “or anybody from that revival does, you tell the staff here immediately. Understood?”
Fear touched Donna’s face again. “Do you think he’d come here?”
“No, you’re safe here. He’s punishing others. I think if he punished you, then he’d have to punish himself as well.” Selena said this, but she didn’t know if she meant it.
That was more comfort than truth, but Donna only nodded.
Selena opened the door.
Carol Sutter straightened from where she had been leaning against the corridor wall. One look at Selena’s face was enough.
“You find everything you need?”
“Yes.”
“I hope this hasn’t set her back.”
Selena glanced back into the room. Donna had pulled the blanket up to her chin and turned toward the wall.
“I think she’ll do what she needs to do,” Selena said quietly. “She’s strong.”
Carol’s mouth tightened with tired compassion. “I know.”
Selena nodded once, already halfway back into motion.
She moved fast down the corridor, through the lobby, past the receptionist at the front desk. Outside, the afternoon light had shifted warmer, but she barely registered it. Her mind was already racing ahead.
Nolan Pruitt at the keyboard.
Nolan Pruitt in real life. Always one step behind the man on the stage. Easy to miss. Easy to underestimate. Exactly the sort of watcher Selena had described out loud before she knew his name.
She was halfway to the car before she realized she had no idea what time it was.
Connor needed to hear this. Now.