CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Connor sat in his SUV outside the Rest and Be Thankful Motel with the engine idling low and the late afternoon light flattening everything into tired shades of brown and gold.
This was day two of going through the list Dana in the archives had put together.
This time, he was alone. He’d yet to hear from Selena.
He thought that was maybe for the best. She needed the rest.
Room doors lined the one-story building in a row of faded blue.
A soda machine buzzed beneath the office awning.
Two work trucks sat near the far end of the lot, one with mud up the side panels and a dent in the tailgate.
Nothing about the place invited attention.
That made it useful. Men who did not want to be noticed always liked motels like this. Cheap. Forgettable. Temporary.
On the seat beside him lay a list of names Dana had gotten from social media snooping. People connected to the revival. Some who worked there, others who came to worship. He had drawn a line through many. The next was Nolan Pruitt’s.
“Dana, any luck with the background checks?”
Dana’s voice came through the speaker, brisk and a little breathless, with the sound of a computer keyboard clicking somewhere behind her in the buzz.
“Most of them came back clean,” she said. “But there was something under one name. A Nolan Pruitt. He’s the keyboardist in Elias Croft’s revival band.”
Connor glanced down at the name on his list. He would have said that felt like fate if he believed in such things.
“What do you have on him?”
Dana said, “Give me a second while I pull it up… So, where’s Arnold? I thought he was helping you with these interviews.”
Connor rubbed at his jaw with his free hand. “Sent him back to the station. He’s losing the will to live with all the interviews.”
A laugh escaped her. “That bad?”
“Bernice Toller threatened to write the governor. A man with a ferret told us evil doesn’t sit where the crowd’s looking. Then Ruth Ann Bell informed us she’d die for Croft and so would the rest of his flock. A few more wackos after that and I think his brain had melted.”
Dana went quiet for a second. “It’s already melted.”
“Yeah.”
Paper shifted at her end. More typing.
Connor looked again at the motel room. No movement. No shadow behind the curtain. The place had that dull, shut-in quiet that made even breathing on the other side of a wall feel suspicious.
Nolan Pruitt.
A keyboardist. The kind of man people forgot because someone louder stood in front of him with a guitar. A man who blended into the background. Connor had known men like that before. Sometimes they were harmless. Sometimes they were storing enough grievances to light half a county.
The phone buzzed in his other hand.
Selena.
Her name lit the screen. Connor glanced at it once, then back at the motel room.
Great, she’s up and about at least, he thought.
Dana came back on the radio. “All right. I’ve got something.”
Connor straightened.
“It’s buried,” she said. “Sealed juvenile record from Ohio. Twenty years ago. Expunged, but there’s still a faint system trace if you know where to look.”
“For what?”
Another pause. Connor could picture her now in records, one hand on the keyboard, glasses halfway down her nose, chewing the inside of her cheek while she dug.
“Fire,” she said. “Residential structure. No fatalities. Limited record left, but his name appears in connection with it.”
Connor looked down at the sheet of names on the passenger seat.
“A fire.”
“Yeah.”
“How old was he?”
“Sixteen, maybe seventeen.”
“Arson charge?”
“Can’t tell. It’s possible he was just a witness.”
Connor stared through the windshield at Room 12.
Fire by itself meant very little. Plenty of boys did stupid things with flames before they were old enough to understand what fire actually was. One sealed record at sixteen could mean anger, recklessness, boredom, revenge, any number of things.
Still.
The buried ones always mattered.
“You want me to keep digging?” Dana asked.
“Yeah. See if there’s another name attached to him. Family, guardian, anybody.”
“Got it.”
He tried to click the radio microphone back into its holder on the dashboard, but it wouldn’t fit properly, like it had been bent out of shape. “God dammit, Arnold. Stop messing around with things.” He just left it hanging by the wire.
Connor looked once more at the dark motel window.
His revolver sat where it always sat, holstered and steady.
He checked the cylinder out of habit, though habit was not the whole truth.
Six rounds. Clean. Ready. He snapped it back in place, slid the weapon into the leather at his belt, and left the retaining strap unbuttoned.
The air smelled faintly of hot asphalt and cut grass from the field behind the motel. Summer was well on its way. Somewhere nearby a television laughed through a thin wall. Connor climbed the concrete steps outside Room 12 and knocked.
No answer.
He knocked again, louder.
Movement sounded inside at once. A scrape of chair legs. A hesitant step. Then the latch clicked and the door opened three inches before the chain stopped it.
A man Connor assumed was Nolan Pruitt peered through the gap.
Up close, he looked even less like a killer than he would have from halfway back in a revival tent.
Narrow face. Sandy hair that needed cutting.
Eyes that seemed to avoid staying on any one thing for long.
A T-shirt hung loose over a thin frame. There was nothing impressive about him physically.
No preacher’s presence. No security man’s heft.
He looked like the sort of man people forgot ten minutes after meeting him.
“Nolan Pruitt?”
“Yes, Sheriff,” Pruitt said softly. “Is this about Preacher Croft? I’ve been told you’re questioning people.”
Connor showed his badge anyway. “Mind if we talk? It’ll only take a moment.”
Pruitt glanced down the lot before answering, as if checking who might see. “What do you want to ask me?”
“Open the door and we can talk. It’s better if this is done in private.”
A moment passed.
Then the chain slid back.
Connor stepped into a room that smelled musty.
One bed had been slept in. The other had a black suit coat folded across it with care that did not match the rest of the room.
A keyboard sat on a collapsible stand by the window with earbuds coiled beside it.
On the nightstand lay a Gideon Bible, a bottle of ibuprofen, and a paper cup full of pens.
Pruitt shut the door and hovered near it.
Connor stayed standing. “You alone, Nolan?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
Pruitt gave a small uncertain nod.
Connor took in the room while he spoke. No women’s things. No obvious drugs. No open booze. The bathroom door stood ajar. Shower dry. Trash can half full of motel wrappers and a takeout container from some Chinese place in town.
“Have you traveled with Elias Croft a long time?” Connor asked.
“For a while, yeah.”
“How’d that happen?”
Pruitt rubbed one thumb over the knuckles of the opposite hand. “I played in church bands before. Somebody heard me in Springfield and told Preacher Croft about me. He needed help. I needed work.”
“Needed God, too?”
A faint smile tugged one corner of Pruitt’s mouth and vanished. “Don’t we all?”
Nolan looked ill at ease. Connor felt in his gut that he was nervous. “No need to feel uncomfortable, Nolan.”
“With what?”
“With me asking questions.”
Pruitt looked toward the keyboard rather than at Connor. “I don’t really have a choice.”
“It’s just a casual chat,” Connor said. “You’re not under arrest or anything like that. Please, sit.”
Pruit sat on the edge of the untouched bed because standing seemed to make him more nervous.
Connor remained on his feet, one shoulder angled toward the door.
Years of interviews had taught him something simple.
Sit when you want to make a person feel equal.
Stand when you want them to remember they are not.
“You know about the three women who attended Croft’s revival and ended up dead?” Connor asked.
Pruitt swallowed. “I heard, yes. Terrible.”
“So people keep reminding me.”
Connor let things go silent for a moment. Another little technique to make someone squirm.
Pruitt’s fingers moved restlessly over his knee. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”
“What you know about the dead women would be a start.”
Connor watched the movement in the man’s hands. Nervous hands. Musician’s hands. Long fingers. Quick and fidgeting. Could hands like that tie someone down? Paint Latin on a wall? Close around a throat? Of course they could. Hands did not confess character.
“Each of the victims visited the revival. You remember Brenda Colter?” Connor asked.
“No.”
“Lauren Gimble?”
“No.”
“Tara Brennan?”
A pause came before the answer. Not long. Long enough.
“Maybe by face. She was well known for her charity work.”
“Maybe?”
“She came to some services.”
“You speak to her?”
“No.”
“Did you see anybody else speaking to her?”
Pruitt shook his head too quickly. “No.”
Connor let the silence stretch.
Motels were never truly quiet, never total. Pipes knocked somewhere beyond the wall. A footstep crossed the outside walkway. The office ice machine rumbled and dropped a load. All of it made the room feel more closed in, highlighting the pause between them.
“Tell me about the people who come through those tents,” Connor said.
“Lonely people. Broken people. The unsaved.”
“You sound like Croft.”
Pruitt shrugged without meaning to. “I hear him every night.”
“That all you hear?”
The question annoyed him. Connor saw it in the slight tightening around the man’s mouth.
“No.”
“What else do you do there?”
“Music only,” Pruitt said.
Connor let that go. “You stay on the bus?”
“No. That’s just for Elias. Sometimes motels or in a car. Depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“Money. Space. The usual considerations for a traveling group.”
“You and Croft close?”