CHAPTER FOUR #2
And now that a man had made the suggestion, Thompson seemed fine with it. “Yeah, we’ll make sure of that. In the meantime, I think I have some corroboration for her story.”
They followed him into the home and were immediately assaulted with the smell of blood, not quite fresh but far from dry.
The blood began at the foyer, a long, ciliated arc that ran from the base of the door all along the left-hand wall.
A single, well-defined handprint rested above the arc at the end of the wall, like a little kid signing his fingerpainting.
They turned the corner and saw the rest of the blood along with the body it belonged to.
Most of it was pooled underneath the body, that of a man in his early forties, overweight, wearing a white shirt and a pair of brown slacks.
The shirt sported a dozen ragged holes and the pants added another, almost perfectly in the center of his left buttock.
Blood soaked the man’s back and pooled underneath him in a sticky, gel-like layer.
The rest of the blood was on the back wall of the kitchen in between the refrigerator and the sink. It spelled the words, Thou shalt not commit adultery.
“At least it’s not in code this time,” Marcus said.
Kate frowned and pulled a pair of gloves on. “Let’s make sure of that.”
She stooped down next to the body and looked closely without touching him. “Name?”
“Donald Pierce, forty-two. Foreman at the Irvin Plant in West Mifflin. Stabbed thirteen times with a kitchen knife.”
“How do you know for sure that it was a kitchen knife?” Kate asked.
Thompson pointed at the kitchen counter. Kate followed his gaze and saw a bloody chef’s knife resting in the sink. “Ah. Prints?”
“CSI’s got ‘em. A woman, about five-two. Rosalyn is five-two, just for your information.”
“Lots of women are five-two,” Kate said, carefully lifting Donald’s head and looking for any inscriptions on the pine flooring or on Donald’s own skin. “Don’t assume that it’s the wife just because Cynthia said it was.”
“Yeah, but the description matches her. Five-two, curly black hair, big t… uh, large breasts. And she was screaming, ‘How could you do this to me, Donald?’ The neighbor backs her up. Said he saw a woman who looked like Rosalyn Pierce running out of her house covered in blood.”
Marcus lifted an eyebrow. “So, the wife comes home, catches Donald in the act, loses her shit and does this, then flees.”
“Well, she caught the mistress acting while Donald sat back and enjoyed it, if you catch my drift.”
Kate gave Thompson a look, and his smile vanished. He cleared his throat and said, “Uh, yeah, that’s what we believe happened.”
“If it’s that open and shut, then why are we here?” Kate asked.
“Well…” Thompson gestured at the writing on the wall. “That’s one of the commandments, right?”
Kate rolled her eyes and got to her feet. “Put an APB out for the wife. The coroner can take the body. Have them look very closely for any marks of any kind anywhere on his body. Doesn’t matter what it is. I’d rather see thirty pictures of moles than miss one of an inscription left by the killer.”
“Yeah, I’ll take care of it. Um… What are you two gonna do?”
“We’re going to search the house. Marcus?”
She led Marcus out of the kitchen and up the stairs. Below, Kate heard Thompson calling in the APB for Rosalyn Pierce. When they reached the top of the staircase, Marcus said, “You don’t think this is one of Cox’s minions, do you?”
“I do not,” she replied. “We have a witness, first of all, and according to that witness and the liberal amount of blood spread from the front door to the kitchen, this is a crime of passion. All of the Lawgiver’s disciples were premeditated in their killings.”
“Yeah, but the witness could be lying. So could Cynthia.”
“They could be. And we’re going to do our due diligence since we’re here, but my first impression is that this is exactly what Cynthia said it was.
A jealous wife came home, caught her husband with another woman, stabbed him, and then decided to pretend it was inspired by Cox to throw us off the scent. ”
Kate pushed open the door to the bedroom.
Her certainty that this wasn’t a commandment killing waned a little when she saw the large crucifix above the bed and the equally large Bible on the dresser.
Ceramic statues of figures in prayer stood on both night tables, and a picture of a Bible study group adorned the vanity mirror.
The woman in the middle had curly black hair, a bright, smile, and was indeed quite well-endowed in the chest area.
“Well, disciple of Cox’s or not, she was definitely a Bible-thumper.”
Kate shone her light over the furnishings, looking for any sign of inscriptions, carvings, notes, or sculptures that indicated a message left behind for her.
All of Cox’s killers had left something behind for Kate to read, including Cox himself.
It was one of the signatures that identified a case as one of the commandment killings.
She saw nothing, not even when she looked through each drawer to see if something was hidden underneath the chaste bloomers Mrs. Pierce preferred to panties.
“They skipped a commandment too,” she said, half to herself.
“What’s that?”
“They skipped a commandment. ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ is the seventh commandment. The sixth one is ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“Well, I mean, come on. Clearly Cox doesn’t think that commandment is important considering he’s literally on a crusade to kill people who break the commandments.”
“He absolutely thinks it’s important,” Kate countered, leading him out of the bedroom and into the upstairs bathroom. “And he doesn’t view what he’s doing as killing.”
“Are you serious? He knows the difference between something living and something with its blood forcibly exsanguinated due to a knife wound, right?”
“Yes, but he sees it as justice and as purification. Divine justice administered by himself and his followers as the agents of God and purification of unclean souls. His actions aren’t breaking commandments, they’re enforcing them.”
“Okay, but is it really important for him to go in order?”
“He’s gone in order with every other commandment. Presumably Donald Pierce isn’t the only man to have cheated on his wife since Cox started these killings. There’s no reason to believe that he’s not going to complete this process the way he started it.”
“Sure, there is. We’re not going to let him complete it.”
Kate gave Marcus a half smile. “Right, but you know what I mean.”
“As long as you know what I mean.”
“What do you mean.”
“I mean… it’s not your fault. You understand that. None of it is your fault.”
Kate sighed. They’d been over this many times, seemingly every time anyone died as a part of Cox’s crusade against “lawbreakers.” She knew it wasn’t her fault, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t connected.
All of this was inspired by her, centered around her, devoted to the culmination of some plan of Cox’s based around her. It wasn’t obsession to believe that. It was verifiable fact. Cox had told her so himself.
But she didn’t want to go through another argument about it, so she just left the bedroom and led them downstairs again.
The rest of the house yielded nothing that suggested Cox or his disciples were involved in any way. It really did seem that this murder was unrelated to the commandment killings.
But a commandment was written on the wall in the victim’s blood. Cox might not have sanctioned this, but his fingerprints were plastered all over it just the same.