CHAPTER SIX
And Friday wore on, the light giving way to winter darkness as a relentless grind of dead ends and half-truths trundled past. Marcus, fueled by caffeine and sheer stubbornness, continued to sift through the records of Pastor Whitfield's former employees, hoping to find some disgruntled soul with a motive for murder.
Kate, meanwhile, spent hours on the phone, conducting telephone interviews with current and former church members, each conversation a carefully scripted dance around the topic of Jonathan Whitfield's character.
"He was what we mean when we talk about a saint," one woman gushed, her voice thick with authentic emotion. "A true man of God. He touched so many lives."
"The Pastor was a beacon of light," another declared, "a guiding star in a world of darkness."
Kate listened patiently, making notes, asking pointed questions, but never quite convinced that she was hearing the whole story, or, in quite a lot of cases, any of it.
It reminded her slightly of what happened when world leaders and other people of that supposed magnitude passed away.
Within minutes, a pre-packed narrative was delivered to the waiting masses, unquestioned, unquestionable, even by the FBI.
“Did anyone ever find him intimidating?” she'd ask. “Did he ever get angry or threatening?”
“Never, he was the most gentle person I’ve known. A true servant of God. Even when he was discussing things that mattered to him personally, like injustice or… or poverty, he did it with a calm voice and peace in his heart.”
Of course he did, Kate thought cynically. He didn't want anyone looking at those particular topics too closely. Because he was the injustice, he was the cause of that poverty, the Pastor and his god-bolstered double-tiered swindle.
“Did you come across anybody who was angry with the Pastor, for any reason?”
And here, the answer was one of blank, almost childlike innocence.
"Now, how could anybody ever be angry at the Pastor?"
A snow job.
That was what Marcus called it. And he was right.
They were getting nowhere. The more people they talked to, the more convinced Kate and Marcus became that they were being played, that a carefully orchestrated campaign of deception was underway, designed to protect Jonathan Whitfield's legacy and obscure the truth.
As the afternoon wore on, the story of Whitfield's gruesome death began to break in the news media, sending shockwaves through the nation.
The headlines were lurid and sensational, designed to grab attention and sell the products being hawked alongside them: "Holy Horror!
Pastor's Tongue Ripped Out," one screamed.
"Divine Retribution or Devilish Act?" asked another.
Alongside the perma-stink of printer ink, sweat, and coffee, the air in the Portland field office grew thick with tension.
The phones started ringing nonstop, journalists clamoring for information, offering outlandish theories, and seeking interviews with anyone who might shed light on the story.
Winters, naturally, had issued a strict gag order, forbidding anyone from speaking to the media without her express permission.
But someone had already talked. The tongue hadn’t featured in the formal press release.
So, despite many sternly worded warnings to the contrary, there was now a book running on who’d leaked.
The odds, according to Marcus, were 6-1 Feds, 4-1 Forensics/Despatch, 3-1 ambulance/other medical and 5-4 cops.
Cops were always the favorite, not because they had less integrity than any of the others, but because, dollar for dollar, they were just the worst paid.
In the midst of this chaos, a figure materialized beside Kate's desk, his bright bowtie practically vibrating with nervous energy.
“Agent Valentine.”
“Mr O’Malley.”
“Rough day?” he asked.
“You could say that,” Kate responded, fighting the urge to snap. “These media people want to know every aspect of this case, and they’re inventing half of it themselves.”
“Well, the press has never let the truth get in the way of a good story,” O’Malley said. “Anyway, the reason I’m here. I think a little relaxation could do wonders for this weary investigator.”
Kate stared at him. “O’Malley, I’ve encountered that ‘oh you’re so tense, let me give you a massage’ number before, and, believe me, there was no happy ending.”
O’Malley cleared his throat awkwardly. “That is not on the menu, I assure you.”
“Okay, what is?” Kate asked.
"There's a meeting. Downtown. In your interests, maybe. Trust me.”
“I don’t know why I do, O’Malley. But I do.”
+ + + + +
O’Malley drove the Bureau-issue sedan along a stretch of cracked asphalt where the streetlights gave out halfway down the block.
Kate studied the sagging porches and the boarded-up storefronts, their windows blind with plywood.
Trash rustled in the gutters, caught by the autumn wind.
The neighborhood smelled faintly of damp concrete and stale cooking oil, the ghosts of fried food lingering from a closed-down diner.
“This where you bring all the ladies?” she asked, dryly.
He gave a low chuckle. “It’s not what it looks like. There’s a meeting here.”
“Meeting?”
“A support group. Victims of financial fraud.”
Kate angled her head, intrigued. O’Malley kept his eyes on the road, but his jaw tightened slightly.
“You’re attending?”
“Been attending for years. I… got cleaned out. Eleven years back. A woman I trusted. Thought I loved her." He gave a humorless shrug. "Turns out she loved my bank account more."
Kate was startled by the disclosure. O’Malley wasn’t the confiding type. But something about the simplicity of his voice—flat, matter-of-fact, not self-pitying—struck her. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.
“Yeah, well. It took me too long to admit it happened. And even longer to admit I needed help dealing with it. That was the battle. Me. Not them.”
"Do you… Sorry, have I given you the impression that something like that happened to me?"
He blinked, as if surprised. “Not at all. I just think you might benefit from a change of direction.”
“How so?”
“I can see the logic of looking at the Pastor’s congregation.
It’s Murder Investigation 101, isn’t it – start with those closest. But it depends on the situation.
And in this situation, you’ve got a highly charismatic leader, believed by many to have the Almighty on speed dial, worshipped as a kind of teacher and prophet… ”
“So the congregation aren’t going to dish the dirt.”
He cleared his throat. “I haven’t discussed what happened to me with anyone in the office.”
“Nobody will hear anything from me,” Kate said.
“I understand what you were saying about needing help.” She looked out at the passing blocks.
“I couldn’t bear the idea that Elijah Cox was using me, that he’d forced this relationship onto me.
I knew I had to report it to Winters, but to do that, I had to admit that it was real.
And I was very good at pretending that it wasn’t. ”
O’Malley glanced at her briefly, then back to the road. “That’s the thing about people like that. Particularly con-artists like Whitfield. It’s less about them telling you lies. Far more about making you lie to yourself.”
The car rolled to a stop in front of a church basement hall with a flickering neon cross above the door.
Paint peeled from the brick walls. A handful of men and women were already milling outside, smoking, the fruity tang of vapes mixing with the rain-soaked pavement.
As Kate and O’Malley walked up, another group shuffled out of the building—thin faces, darting eyes, twitching hands.
Narcotics Anonymous, dispersing. A few of them looked Kate and O’Malley up and down, not exactly narrowing their eyes, but not exactly welcoming, either.
“Don’t all smile at once,” Kate muttered.
“They made us, that’s all,” O’Malley said, with a grin. “C’mon, Valentine! You know junkies can smell law enforcement from a hundred yards off.”
Inside, the place hummed faintly with the buzz of old fluorescent tubes.
Folding chairs were set in a circle on a scuffed linoleum floor.
The scent was of burnt coffee, wet coats and air freshener.
Sporting a whistle on a green lanyard, a woman in her fifties clapped her hands three times, calling the meeting to order.
The guest speaker, a wiry brunette, stood up and told her story: how her business partner had bled her company dry.
But the worst part, she said, wasn’t the theft.
It was what she did to herself afterward.
The lies, the shame, the isolation. “You fight it with honesty,” she finished. “Truth is the only weapon that works.”
A murmur of agreement moved around the circle. Others offered their stories in short, jagged bursts. A man with a rich, deep voice like an actor described his reaction to the news about Pastor Whitfield.
“I can’t celebrate the death of another human being,” he said. “That’s not in my nature. I just prayed that, in the aftermath, there will be some kind of reckoning. And I’m not talking about the money. Because that’s gone. That’s all gone.”
There were murmurs of agreement and support from around the circle. The man continued.
“It’s about acknowledging that we allow this to happen.
We create men like Whitfield because we’re a society that’s fixated on wealth and the trappings of wealth.
We count a person’s worth by the size of their bank balance!
My father always used to say that a nation gets the government it deserves.
Well, I’ve come to realise that we get the criminals we deserve, too.
Without greed, without gaping inequality and grinding poverty, there would be no Whitfields. ”