CHAPTER TEN
Winters called them on their way out of the neighborhood. “I have two hits on that database query,” she told Kate.
Kate put the phone on speaker so Marcus could hear. “Go ahead.”
“Paul Delaney, a retired insurance adjuster from Knoxville, Tennessee, and Ruth Osgood, a middle-school employee in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Both victims match the MO and occurred in dioceses that had records of a visiting priest.”
“They recorded Cox’s visit?”
"To clarify, the records were private notations by the parish priests that the Conference of Bishops was made aware of through their internal reporting program.
The contact with whom I spoke stressed that reporting was optional.
The visiting priest was identified as Father Glover; however, it's clear it was Cox. "
“Where do these murders fit in the timeline?” Marcus asked.
“Delaney’s murder was eight weeks ago, and Ruth Osgood was killed three days later. That makes them victims one and two, before Prescott’s murder.”
And brings Cox’s body count to a dozen. “Do you have the crime scene photographs?”
“I have the ones from the Osgood scene. The detective in Knoxville is being an ass, but he said he’d send them to me before the end of the evening.”
Marcus glanced out the window at the dark sky. “He’ll have to move his ass.”
“He will, or he’ll learn what the meaning of the phrase, ‘the wrath of God is.’”
Kate frowned at her boss’s choice of words, but she let it pass. “Thank you, ma’am.”
“What are you two up to?”
“We just left Gloria Prentiss’s house. We talked to her daughter, and I think I know now why the objects were placed in windows. I think Cox is hunting people who are hiding their theft. He’s exposing people who enjoy not just stealing but getting away with stealing.”
“You got that from the daughter?”
“Yes. She mentioned her mother enjoyed watching people realize something was stolen but not that she was the one stealing it.”
“That’s progress, but how does that help you find Cox?”
Kate took a deep breath. “I’m not sure. We’re still working on that.”
"Well, keep working. I'll get you the photos. Hopefully, something at these crime scenes can peel back another layer of whatever's going on here. Good luck, agents. And good work.”
Traffic slowed as they reached the outskirts of Indianapolis.
Like all major cities, Indianapolis never fully slept.
Kate wondered how many of the fast-moving people flitting around from work to club to more work to bars to restaurants to concerts took time to think about the people at the edges of the herd, the ones picked off by the wolves slinking along the outskirts.
Maybe that was the point of this lifestyle: filling oneself with so much noise and movement that you didn’t have a chance to think about the danger.
“So we have six victims in eight weeks,” Marcus said. “Does Cox have an endgame for this commandment, do you think, or is he just going to switch to the ninth one when he’s bored?”
"He definitely has an endgame," Kate replied, "and he's definitely not bored. He can handle boredom. He had a reputation for spending most of his days sitting cross-legged in his bunk."
"Huh. Crazy, he didn't atrophy enough that he can still kill people."
“Old men and middle-aged women,” Kate said. “And he had to knock out the big guy. I think he might have suffered a little muscle loss. Just not enough to stop him.”
“Yeah, fair point. So what about the endgame, though? What’s he looking to gain from all of this?”
He made a right turn and had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting a gaggle of twenty-somethings stumbling into the street. One of them offered a giggling apology, and Marcus shook his head and muttered, “Jeez, do people not look where they’re going anymore?”
“Not enough,” Kate replied. She sighed heavily. “He’s exposing people who are hiding their theft.”
“But then confessing it to him. And there’s no way priests are going to tell us what their parishioners are confessing.”
Kate looked out the window, brow furrowed. “People knew that Gloria Prentiss was a priest.”
“Yeah, her daughter.”
"I think that Warren's ex-wives knew he was a thief, too. By all accounts, he was a kind, soft-spoken individual. Kind, soft-spoken people don't have three divorces."
“That tells us why those victims,” Marcus said, “but it doesn’t tell us where to go next. That’s the problem. Cox wanted the world to see those objects, but if there’s no connection between the victims, then how do we figure out where he goes next?”
Kate didn’t have an answer.
Not yet. You don’t have an answer yet.
“Let’s look at the photographs Kate’s sending us. Maybe we’ll see something there that will help us understand.”